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UNITED STATES OF Aft ERIC/ < 



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THE 

GATES OF THE EAST 



A WINTER IN 



Egypt and Syria 



BY 



HENRY CrPOTTER, D.D. 



/ 






v 




NEW YORK \\ C>^ i 

)UTTON & COMPANY^ 
713 Broadway 

1877 



Copyright, 

E. P. Dutton & Company. 

1876. 



A" 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Preface, - 5 

I. From Italy to Egypt, - 9 

II. The Gate of Egypt, - - - - 16 

III. The Land of the Sun, 22 

IV. First Days in Cairo, - - - - 30 
V. An Arab Temple, - 43 

VI. The Mosques of Cairo, - - - 51 

VII. A Pilgrim Procession, 58 

VIII. Shopping in Grand Cairo, - - - 72 

IX. The Nile Voyage, - 87 

X. Coptic Customs, - - • - - - 102 

XI. A Coptic Wedding, - - - - 117 

XII. Education in Egypt, - 131 

XIII. The Nile and the Pyramids, - - 145 

XIV. Our Gifts to Egypt, - - - - 155 



Some Winter Days in Palestine. 

I. The Gate of Syria, - 165 

II. Jaffa, - 172 

III. RAMLEH, ------ 182 

IV. Jerusalem, ------ 190 



IV CONTENTS. 

V. Outside the Walls of Jerusalem, - 198 
VI. Olivet and Bethany, - 207 

VII. Jericho, 216 

VIII. The Dead Sea and the Jordan, - 224 

IX. Bethlehem, 233 

X. The Jews and their Wailing-Place 

in Jerusalem, 240 

XI. Is it Worth While to Visit the Holy 

Land? - 247 

Appendix, 254 



PREFACE. 



We had started for the Pyramids before 
eight o'clock in the morning. This was not, 
it must be owned, to get a view of them by 
sunrise, but to avoid being detained on the 
wrong side of the Nile, by the opening of the 
drawbridge which connects Cairo and the 
west bank of the river, until late in the after- 
noon. But though our early rising had no 
better motive than our convenience, it had 
its own abundant reward. It was early in 
December, and the country, as we rode on 
through the chill morning air, was covered 
by a dense mist which made any object at 
the distance of a hundred yards all but invis- 
ible. We were under the shadow of the 
Pyramids, therefore, almost before we were 
aware of their neighborhood, and as we 
turned to find the Sphinx, a sudden parting 



VI PREFACE. 

of the dense vapors flashed its colossal out- 
lines upon us with an effect which was almost 
uncomfortably startling. 

Silently we stood and gazed. In our 
search we had become separated, and though 
but a few feet apart were viewing it from op- 
posite angles. 

"What a pure and graceful outline/' I 
exclaimed, " despite its colossal proportions." 

My companion remained silent a moment 
longer, and then said, slowly : 

" Scarcely pure or graceful, I should say. 
The lips are too full to suggest such an idea, 
and the expression, while gracious and serene, 
is distinctly African and somewhat coarse and 
animal." 

And straightway there followed a contro- 
versy which was both long and heated. Sud- 
denly it occurred to the two disputants to 
exchange places, and soon after it became 
apparent that we were in imminent danger of 
exchanging our opinions likewise. 

This modest parable is perhaps a sufficient 
apology for the following pages. Books 
about the East, of a far less unambitious 
character than this little volume, are already 
abundant. But each man's reminiscences of 
travel give a view of more or less familiar 



PREFACE. Vll 

scenery from a comparatively fresh view- 
point. And so these recollections of what 
others have already seen and described in 
pages both grave and gay, may perhaps help 
to set some features of the East in less 
wonted, if more subdued, lights. 

Their title is intended chiefly as a dis- 
claimer of any pretensions to extended 
research. *As Jaffa and Alexandria, as they 
are described in the following pages, are the 
thresholds, respectively, of Egypt and Syria, 
so are the Egypt and Syria of to-day little 
more than the gates or portals of that vaster 
East which lies beyond them. To these still 
unfamiliar and, in some degree, unvisited 
regions, curiosity still turns most eagerly ; 
and, meantime, while waiting for the reports 
of the adventurous spirits who are exploring 
them, may perhaps be willing to divert itself 
with reminiscences of lands and peoples less 
unfamiliar. H. C. P. 



I. 



The Parting -Place of Two Forms of Civiliza- 
tion — The Influence of Indian life upon 
English Manners and English Character, 

The traveller who leaves Brindisi as a pas- 
senger on board one of the Peninsular and 
Oriental Steamship Company's vessels, bound 
for Egypt, takes his last look at Italian shores 
as the stately ship creeps cautiously out of 
that ancient harbor at the hour of five in the 
morning. If the weather be fine, the first 
faint hints of daybreak will be flecking the 
distant East, and little by little as the vessel 
moves from her moorings the outlines of the 
town will be coming into view. At such a 
moment our traveller, if he be a tolerably 
quick observer, will discern, standing close to 
the water's edge, a low and ragged-looking 
structure, without either the dignity of age or 



IO FROM ITALY TO EGYPT. 

the fresher charms of youth, across whose face 
runs the legend in staring capitals, " English 
Welcome. " If he be in a cynical mood (as 
he is greatly apt to be if he has travelled since 
noon of the previous day without pause, hav- 
ing come through from Bologna to Brindisi, 
some four hundred miles, by means of an all- 
night ride in a railway carriage, which is not a 
Pullman palace sleeping-car), he will be very 
apt to mutter something not very compliment- 
ary to the Italian ingenuity which, by such be- 
guiling words, would fain coax the homeward- 
bound traveller into a dirty inn where he will 
be regaled with stale beer and sour wine. 

And yet the words, after a rudely typical 
fashion, are at once expressive and true. The 
steamships that sail from Alexandria, in Egypt, 
to Brindisi, in Italy, are the carriers of the 
great tide of traffic between India and Eng- 
land, or, indeed, between Asia and Europe. 
And so, when the voyager from the East lands 
at last at that Italian port which was once the 
ancient Brindisium, he for the first time comes 
in contact with western civilization, and hears 
a European, and not unfrequently an English, 
welcome. In a word, in the experience of 
travel the port of Brindisi may be said to be 
the point at which the two civilizations part 



FROM ITALY TO EGYPT. u 

company ; and as I leaned over the taffrail of 
the good ship Hindostan, and read the slowly- 
fading words " English Welcome " over the 
door of the little Italian inn, I comprehended 
that they meant for me not welcome but fare- 
well. The timbers beneath my feet were of 
English oak, and the commander who stood 
near me, issuing his few and brief orders, was 
unmistakably of English stock and training; 
but the crew who did his bidding were quite 
as unmistakably of another race. It did not 
require their Oriental costume, and quick, 
lithe movements, to betray them as Asiatics. 
There was in all that they did that wonderful 
absence of bustle or flurry which is one of 
the greatest charms of Eastern people. One 
could understand, while watching them, why 
it is that we Westerns have learned to turn 
to the East for rest. To a tired and fevered 
brain, fretted and fagged with the incessant 
hurry of our American ways, there is some- 
thing inexpressibly soothing in the mere 
accidents of Oriental life. It is not only 
that the climate of the East itself disposes 
one to inactivity, but scarcely less, I am dis- 
posed to believe, because of that absence of 
nervous worry, of noise, of impatience, of 
sharp tones and pushing eagerness, which 



12 FR03I ITALY TO EGYPT. 

contribute so largely, though often so insensi- 
bly, to wear upon one's nerves in connection 
with tasks and responsibilities that may not 
be exceptionally great or grave. During the 
progress of .our voyage the wind sprang up 
suddenly, as it is so apt to do on the Mediter- 
ranean, and it became necessary to lower the 
ample awning which had been spread over 
the deck, and to do it with the utmost rapidi- 
ty. The dullest imagination can easily depict 
to itself the amount of bluster and profanity 
on the part of superiors, and of clamor and 
blundering on the part of the crew, with 
which, on a ship manned as we are ordinarily 
accustomed to see them manned, this would 
have been accomplished. But as it was, 
there was something in the swift, silent, and 
unerring rapidity with which, amid the utter 
darkness of the evening, these Asiatics began 
and finished their task, which was almost 
ghost-like. 

But it is not alone by the crew that one is 
reminded that he has turned his back upon 
the civilization and the customs of the West. 
The viands that appear upon the ship's table 
— among them "Bombay duck," which is a 
kind of dried fish, eaten as bread with one's 
curry, and Madras biscuit, in which assafcetida 



FROM ITALY TO EGYPT. 1 3 

is a prominent ingredient — the punka which 
hangs suspended over our heads as we par- 
take of these novel delicacies ; the currency 
in which the smoker pays for his cigars, the 
price of which, as he is informed, is " ten for 
a rupee w ; the slatted partitions of our state- 
rooms, arranged so as to make the ship a vast 
sieve through which the air can fully play — 
all these things tell us that we have left 
behind us wellnigh everything that is dis- 
tinctive of European life. 

And of this we are reminded not less forci- 
bly as we come to know and identify our 
fellow passengers. There is, it is true, a 
sprinkling of tourists— travellers who are 
going to the East in search of rest, of nov- 
elty, or of a more sunny climate; but, as a 
rule, the ship's list is made up of persons who 
have homes or duties in the far East, and 
who are hastening back, after a Summer in 
England, to hard work in Bombay or Calcut- 
ta. There are judges and military men, well- 
bronzed and nobly-bearded subalterns in the 
Indian civil service ; there is a missionary, a 
bride, and a Roman archbishop of Calcutta; 
and, most interesting to those of us who have 
homes and children, there are parents whom 
the hard exigencies of the Indian climate 



14 FROM ITALY TO EGYPT 

have compelled to leave behind in England 
their children, and who are putting weary 
years and thousands of miles between them 
and all that is dearest to them. But what- 
ever may be their private histories, almost all 
of them are, as travelled Englishmen so 
universally are, delightful companions and 
most kindly and intelligent fellow-travellers. 
It is surely one of the lesser boons of India 
to England that it has rubbed off from so 
many English people the somewhat narrow 
and insular characteristics which make Eng- 
lish men and women sometimes not altogether 
lovely to their American cousins. We shall 
probably never see these fellow-voyagers of 
ours again ; but we shall remember them, I 
fancy, for many a day to come. 

Crossing the Mediterranean Sea is apt to 
be a troubled and turbulent experience ; but 
our voyage from shore to shore (I write these 
lines within sight of that modern Pharos which 
lights the way to the port of Alexandria) has 
been as serene as a journey by steamboat up 
the Hudson ; and in the evening, when the 
main deck, lighted, under its vast awning, 
with huge globe lamps hung at intervals along 
its whole length, is thronged with the gay 
groups that have come up from our 6 o'clock 



FROM ITALY TO EGYPT. 



15 



dinner, it is hard to realize that one is at sea 
at all. There is not even the usual ocean 
swell, and the level sea, with the moon just 
rising behind the hills of Candia — that Crete 
which, to the Christian hearts, will forever be 
consecrated by its association with its first 
Bishop, the devout and zealous Titus — com- 
bines to make a scene at once unique and 
picturesque. To any one seeking repose, such 
a life at sea, could it last long enough, would 
be simply perfect ; and as one of our party, a 
lady of somewhat nervous temperament, con- 
fesses to having slept twelve hours without 
awaking, it may safely be recommended as 
a " soft nepenthe " for irritated and tired ner- 
vous organizations. 

But I am warned that it is time to stop. 
A soft-voiced and comely-looking personage 
in a flowing costume of dark blue, with a 
brilliant sash and turban, appears unexpect- 
edly at my elbow, and informs me that we are 
to go ashore at Alexandria without delay, and 
that he is commissioned to escort our party 
as far as Cairo. He is Hassan Speke by 
name, and he bears credentials from honored 
New Yorkers, which encourage us to confide 
ourselves to his guidance with entire assur- 
ance. A short row in an open boat, a parting 



1 6 THE GATE OF EGYPT. 

glance at our good ship Hindostan, and our 
feet are on Egyptian soil and our ears saluted 
with the babel of tongues which mark an 
Eastern seaport. 



II. 



Wp dab xrff ^gijpL 

First Impressions of the East — The Bible and 
the Arabian Nights — Aladdin Buying his 
Lamp. 

There is undoubtedly one advantage in a 
Custom House which has never been ade- 
quately recognized. It is a singularly efficient 
check upon a traveller's excessive enthusiasm. 
The world will probably never know how 
many glowing utterances have been stifled and 
silenced by the petty vexations of " passing " 
one's luggage. The voyager from the West 
who sails into the harbor of Alexandria will 



THE GATE OF EGYPT. 17 

be dull, indeed, if both memory and imagina- 
tion are not aroused by the sight of its towers 
and mosques and minarets. His mind will 
first recall the grand Macedonian conqueror 
whose name it bears, and if he be a Christian 
student he will not less vividly remember its 
once matchless library, and the story of the 
translations of the Septuagint. Not less 
vividly will rise the history of the Church in 
Alexandria and of the great names whose 
genius Kingsley has inwoven into the thread 
of his greatest novel, "Hypatia." And .then 
the nearer history of later days, of the con- 
quests of the Turk and of the Corsican — it is 
very easy to see that there is a great deal of 
material here for " fine " writing and " gush- 
ing " enthusiasm ; but it is astonishing how 
rapidly this enthusiasm evaporates ■ in the 
presence of a preternaturally solemn-looking 
African gentleman, whose compound expres- 
sion of self-consequence and stupidity makes 
one recall instinctively some early fruits of 
the Fifteenth Amendment, who challenges 
your trunks as they are landed from the 
feluccas, and whose vigilance in their ex- 
amination will depend, absolutely and invari- 
ably, upon the very practical question whether 
you approach him beforehand with one rupee 



1 8 ' THE GATE OF EGYPT. 

or two. You know, and you know that he 
knows, that the Egyptian customs laws exempt 
all passengers' luggage of whatever sort, and 
that he has not the slightest right to do more 
than assure himself of what is obvious enough, 
that you are a traveller and not a trader ; and 
this knowledge does not contribute to the 
serenity of your temper while he commands 
you to open one portmanteau after another, 
his blundering and bungling scrutiny of which 
indicates most plainly that he would not be 
able to recognize a contraband article if he 
should see it. 

The ordeal produces one effect with uner- 
ring certainty. By the time you have got 
through with the ebony guardian of the 
Khedive's revenue (whose tint implies his 
Nubian rather than Egyptian extraction), 
every vestige of sentimental enthusiasm has 
evaporated, and you are in a fine state of 
indifference as to every historic association or 
monument of antiquity by which Alexandria 
is distinguished. 

Perhaps it is as well that it is so, for other- 
wise the sights that greet one who passes for 
the first time through the thronged and nar- 
row streets of this busy seaport would be 
almost too much for his equanimity. Alex- 



THE GATE OF EGYPT. 19 

andria is undoubtedly one of the least eastern 
of eastern cities. Its own national customs 
and characteristics have been so overlaid with 
those of other races and lands that in some 
parts of the town there is little that is not 
distinctively French or English or Italian. 
There are shops and signs and posters on the 
walls representing each and all of these 
nations and their speech. But all this does 
not extinguish, if it does much more than 
most imperfectly modify, the intensely unfa- 
miliar look of that which your first drive or 
walk reveals to you. The open shops, with 
their cross-legged proprietors sitting so close 
to the carriage-way that one might reach out 
his hand and reap a harvest of commercial 
turbans without leaving his seat; the water- 
carriers, with their skins filled with water and 
borne upon their shoulders; the microscopic 
donkeys, bearing personages so rotund and 
portly that one wonders why Mr. Bergh has 
never moved eastward with his merciful work 
of prevention ; the veiled women, who look so 
mysterious, and whose costumes are so per- 
fect a type, in their hideous shapelessness, of 
their harder lot of seclusion and inferiority ; 
the tropical fruits and flowers, which by their 
endless profusion make vulgar and valueless 



20 THE GATE OF EGYPT. 

the rarest exotics of the hot-houses of Euro- 
pean princes ; all these things come upon one 
with a force of surprise and fascination which 
no familiarity derived from books or the 
spoken reminiscences of others can in the 
slightest degree diminish. Indeed, all the 
descriptions of books and the glowing tales 
of travellers are alike forgotten, with two 
memorable exceptions — one of these is the 
Bible, and the other is the "Arabian Nights." 
I shall never forget the suddenness with 
which, when for the first time I saw an Arab 
set's, or runner, flying, a very figure of Mer- 
cury, with his flowing and wing-like sleeves, 
his long, slender wand, and his indescribably 
graceful, elastic, and at the same time fleet 
and tireless, gait — there sprung to my lips the 
passage, " And Elijah girded up his loins and 
ran before the chariot of Ahab, even to the 
entrance of Jezreel." 

So scarcely less of scenes from the " Ara- 
bian Nights." I passed, one day, the shop or 
booth of a dealer in lamps, and in the atti- 
tude of a young Egyptian, who stood criti- 
cally scrutinizing a brass lamp, which, from 
its material and shape, looked as if it might 
have been made a thousand years ago, there 
was something which made me exclaim, 



THE GATE OF EGYPT. 21 

" Aladdin ! " as if on the instant the marvels 
of the wonderful lamp were waiting to be 
repeated. There is a strange excitement in 
scenes like these, when they are met for the 
first time, which makes one almost doubt, for 
the moment, his own identity. 

Just because words can so poorly repro- 
duce such impressions, I shall not be guilty 
of the impertinence of describing what so 
many others have seen and sketched before, 
and what art has made even more familiar 
than have letters. Of course every new- 
comer in Egypt goes to see Pompey's Pillar 
and Cleopatra's Needle, and equally of 
course, if he is moved to think about them at 
all, resents the mistaken tradition which asso- 
ciates the former with a name which it was 
not reared to commemorate, and despises the 
latter as so contemptible a memorial of so 
famous a woman ; but I think that those of 
us who went sight-seeing together for the first 
time in Alexandria found our foremost object of 
interest in a very different direction, and in a far 
more modern structure. Some of us had heard 
of the Hospital of the Deaconesses of Kaisers- 
werth, and we were anxious to see something, 
if possible, of their work. Of our visit I shall 
have some account to give in another chapter. 



III. 



First Days in Egypt — Perpetually Unclouded 
Skies — Conversation Minus the Weather — 
The Deaconesses' Hospital Work. 

The day of our arrival in Alexandria hap- 
pened, fortunately, to be one of the two days 
in the week when the Hospital of the Deacon- 
esses of Kaiserswerth is open to visitors, and 
upon driving to the gateway we were at once 
admitted to the wards. A more striking con- 
trast to the scenes which we had left without 
it would not be easy to conceive. A few 
moments before we had stood at the base of 
the pillar which, known as Pompey's, com- 
memorates the victories of Diocletian, amid 
surroundings which appealed with equal 
orTensiveness to almost all our senses. It was 
just at the edge of a huge cemetery, whose 
living fringe consisted of a straggling line of 



THE LAND OF THE SUN. 2$ 

hovels, so mean and dreary that one felt 
instinctively that the living must daily envy 
the happier and more decent lot of the dead 
who slept beside them. The Egyptians have 
a passion for sitting, eating, sleeping, and 
working on the ground, which to our western 
eyes is as filthy as it is unintelligible; and 
then the flies and the heat and the decaying 
debris of vegetable matter — all this made a 
condition so degraded and pitiful that it 
seemed almost an affront to be passively look- 
ing upon it, instead of straightway setting to 
work to better it. 

It was from such spectacles that we passed 
in an instant to the roomy, cool, and spotlessly- 
clean precincts of the Deaconesses' Hospital. 
I had made it my business while in the great 
cities of Europe to inspect their hospitals with 
especial reference to the two points of arrange- 
ment and ventilation. In these respects, and 
no less in many others, nothing could be better 
than the Kaiserswerth Hospital at Alexandria. 
The Germans have a happy gift of making the 
houses in which they live look cosey and 
home-like ; and in the wards, as we passed on 
through the hospital, there were so many 
nameless little tokens of thoughtfulness and 
refinement that we recognized at once the 



24 THE LAND OF THE SUM 

presence of womanly taste and painstaking. 
It being visitors' day, the patients were, some 
of them, enjoying the visits of friends, and 
there was something indescribably pathetic in 
the brightening and grateful looks which they, 
and those persons who sat beside them, turned 
upon the sister who accompanied us from ward 
to ward. 

Mission-work, so far as it has been an 
attempt to convert them from their ancient 
faith, has been proverbially slow and disheart- 
ening work among Mohammedan races, and 
missionaries have found how almost invincible 
are the prejudices of a people who cling so 
tenaciously to the religious traditions of their 
past ; but one could not help thinking that if 
anything could efficiently translate to the 
Egyptian the spirit of the religion of Jesus 
Christ, and, at the same time, win a way for it 
to the hearts of these disciples of the Moslem 
prophet, it would be the incomparable beauty 
and benignity of this work of the Deaconesses 
of Kaiserswerth. 

A work more devoid of sentimentalism, and 
yet more heroic in its unrecorded self-denials, 
it would be hard to imagine. The diseases 
which bring patients to the hospital are often 
of the most distressing and loathesome kind. 



THE LAND OF THE SUN. 25 

and a life of such ministrations, in a debilitat- 
ing climate, far from home and friends, is one 
that only the loftiest inspirations could make 
endurable. And yet the simple, robust, prac- 
tical way in which the deaconesses went about 
their work was a positive refreshment to be- 
hold. There was an utter absence of a com- 
plaining or whining or sanctimonious tone, an 
open-eyed and straightforward candor in mien 
and speech and gesture, which might well be 
imitated by the members of religious orders 
everywhere. Yet these women can feel, and 
feel intensely; for when one of the visitors, 
upon leaving, placed in the hand of the sister 
who had attended us a substantial token of 
interest in the work, her face, as she received 
it, and her voice, as she said in broken and 
stammering English, " Surely the Lord will 
reward you," were surcharged with intensest 
emotion. 

As we passed out of the hospital gate we 
were greeted with a scene which most forcibly 
recalled to us our Oriental surroundings. 
Seated on the ground just beside the road was 
a woman draped in black from head to foot, 
and surrounded by a circle of female figures. 
We found, upon inquiry, that it was a mother 
who had lost her son (the lad having just died 



26 THE LAND OF THE SUN". 

in the hospital), and whose friends had come 
to mourn with her. Here, as before, we found 
ourselves thinking of descriptions in the 
Bible, and the picture of Job's friends sitting 
at the first as these women were sitting, in a 
common and unbroken silence, became a 
living reality. We could not help hoping that 
here the resemblance might end, and that, 
unlike the Patriarch in his grief, the bereaved 
mother might not be tortured by the imperti- 
nent attempts of her friends to interpret to 
her the dealings of God. 

As we rode back to our inn, the clouds 
which had been gathering broke, and we were 
disposed to grumble at the inconvenience to 
which the shower seemed likely to subject us ; 
but we were silenced when our dragoman told 
us that it was the first rain that Alexandria 
had had for a year ! When, after it was over, 
and the evening closed down upon us, we 
looked out from our balcony upon such a 
night as one sees nowhere else in the world, 
we had a fresh surprise. A friend in Paris 
had charged us to provide ourselves with an 
astronomical chart, and we were thankful that 
we had heeded the suggestion. Such a con- 
trast to the skies of Europe it is simply im- 
possible to imagine. Among our travelling 



THE LAND OF THE SUN. 2 J 

companions in crossing the Mediterranean 
was a distinguished American whose official 
residence is in Germany, and who mentioned 
that he had not seen the sun in Berlin for five 
weeks. It was not surprising, therefore, to 
hear him say that when he glided out of the 
Mont Cenis Tunnel into the sunny air of 
Italy, " it was like coming into heaven ; " but 
even the sun and the sky of Italy seem pale 
beside those of Egypt; and when the night 
comes it has a soft and luminous charm which 
makes going to bed seem almost profanity. 
In Alexandria, moreover, our surroundings 
made sleep nearly as impossible as it seemed 
irreverent ; for, whether it was a consequence 
of the situation of our inn, or of the exigen- 
cies of some Mohammedan feast or fast, our 
ears were saluted all night long with the call 
of the muezzin to prayer, and whether his 
call was the ancient one, " Prayer is better 
than sleep," or some other, we were unani- 
mous in the conclusion that nothing could 
have been worse than such wretched sleep as 
was ours. 

But, in spite of all such minor annoyances 
— and, of course, it is only in exceptional 
situations that they are to be encountered — 
the climate of Egypt has a perpetual and 



28 THE LAND OF THE SUN. 

matchless charm. Its airs are not softer, nor 
its skies sunnier, perhaps, than those of parts 
of our own land or many others. But to the 
invalid, its unbroken equilibrium, if I may- 
use the phrase, must be an unspeakable com- 
fort. The American inhabitants of Egypt 
whom I have seen declare that its Summer 
heats are less excessive than those of New 
York, while its serene and sunny Winters, 
where storms are simply impossible, make 
living a perpetual delight. The effect it has, 
however, of withdrawing from active circula- 
tion a large part of the most useful small 
change of western conversation is at once 
amusing and awkward. Coming from Eng- 
land, where, at the close of a great ecclesias- 
tical gathering, lasting for a week, during the 
whole of which the sun was visible for just 
five hours, I nevertheless heard the mayor of 
the city felicitating the members of the 
assembly upon the fact that they had been 
"favored with such remarkably fine weather," 
one naturally remarks the dawn Of a sunshiny 
morning. But to an inhabitant it 'is, appar- 
ently, quite unmeaning to speak of it. If you 
say it is a fine day, he stares at you w T ith an 
air of curious interrogation which shows that 
he does not quite grasp your meaning. It is 



THE LAND OF THE SUN. 29 

as much a truism as if you had said " there is 
a sun in the heavens." To him it is as much 
the function of the sun to shine in an abso- 
lutely unclouded sky as it is that of the earth 
to turn upon its axis. I am not sure that so 
much sunshine might not grow monotonous 
at last, but as a change from harsher and 
gloomier skies it is certainly most delightful. 
As one experiences it for the first time, his 
wonder is not that there has been one Lady 
Duff Gordon with her home upon the banks 
of the Nile, but rather that the whole English 
people in a body do not flock to the land of 
whose great commercial highway they have so 
lately and so wisely possessed themselves. 



IV. 

j)aij$ in ©rnrxu 



Odd Phases of Mohammedan Character — The 
Remedy for Egypfs Ills, 

It is an ignominious approach to Cairo to 
find your way into it by means of an English 
railway carriage. If one has read Eden's 
descriptions of the approach to the city, as 
seen from the Nile, or from the back of a 
camel, he realizes that he is purchasing com- 
fort at a very large sacrifice of picturesque- 
ness as he runs into the Cairo station. The 
station itself wears the air of a stopping- 
place on the Pacific Railway, with the ad- 
dition of a slight French veneer. There 
is nothing Oriental in the omnibus, or in 
the steeds that draw it, and one has to drive 
a block or two before he realizes that he 
is in an Oriental city. 

The first thing that conspicuously indicates 



FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 31 

that is a drinking fountain erected by the 
present Khedive's mother, and indicating on 
the part of that estimable old lady a thought- 
fulness for the comfort of the common people 
which has not always been the distinguishing 
characteristic of her royal son. Nothing 
could be more utterly unlike a European or 
American drinking fountain than this one in 
Cairo. It looks, instead, like a bank or a 
prison, and is as difficult of approach as if it 
were a post-office. In order to get your cup 
of water you have to climb a steep flight of 
steps and apply at one of a series of windows, 
which are closed by massive iron gratings, 
through which the water is warily passed. 
And such a sight makes one straightway ap- 
preciate the preciousness of pure water. I 
realized it in another way when I was told 
that an officer in high rank in the government 
indicated his especial confidence in his second 
wife (who, it appears, is far more of a favorite 
than any of the other three) by entrusting to 
her keeping the key of his water-jar. Could 
there be a more expressive indication, inci- 
dentally, of the life of wariness and suspicion 
which an Oriental personage of rank so often 
leads, expecting to be poisoned by the hands 
of the persons who owe him the most loyal 



32 FIRST DATS IF CAIRO. 

devotion; and, again, of the preciousness of 
the thing which, free as the air with us, a 
prince in Egypt keeps under lock and key ? 

I realized this still further when, a few days 
later, I encountered in the bazaar a water- 
peddler, who pestered me to buy a cup of 
water, as if he were offering me the rarest 
bargain. But one comes to understand it 
when he finds that the great mass of the peo- 
ple are dependent upon the. water which is 
brought from the river by hand, either in jars 
upon the heads of girls or in skins upon the 
backs of men. Anything which involves so 
much laborious drudgery must be, in a cer- 
tain sense, a costly luxury. 

The system is not without its advantages, 
which are not perhaps adequately estimated. 
An Egyptian water-carrier is the very realiza- 
tion of graceful motion. As the women come 
up from the river's bank, skilfully balancing 
the huge jars of water upon their heads, you 
find yourself owning that no picture, by 
whatsoever gifted hand, has at all conveyed 
to you the singular charm of their bearing 
and action. It was impossible that it should 
convey it, for, although a picture can suggest 
motion, it cannot portray it; and it must 
surely be a lesson to the women of more civ- 



FIB ST DAYS IJSf CAIRO. 33 

ilized nations who have been striving for gen- 
erations by a thousand conventionalisms of 
dress, of pose, and of action to secure the 
charm of graceful movement and aspect to 
find themselves utterly eclipsed by a statue of 
living and breathing bronze, whose only gar- 
ment is composed of a few yards of dirty blue 
cotton cloth, hanging loosely from her throat 
to her feet, and who is, nevertheless, in every 
movement of her stately figure, and in every 
wave and fold of her simple drapery, a very 
poem of grace and dignity. One could not 
help speculating what would be the effect 
upon the persons most interested in the mat- 
ter, if the young ladies whose only acquaint- 
ance with the Central Park reservoir consists 
at present in driving languidly past it, were 
constrained, instead, to supply their own fam- 
ilies with its liquid stores after the Egyptian 
fashion. It would be a novelty upon the 
shady side of Fifth avenue; but it would 
vastly diminish the number of narrow-chested 
and consumptive young women who now 
stroll to and fro through that thoroughfare. 
When you go to Sakkara to visit its 
Pyramids, your donkey-boy, if you eschew 
the railway, will have to run beside you, first 
and last, for a distance of thirty-five miles. 



34 FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 

" What splendid lungs ! " you think, and are 
puzzled to explain such rare endurance until 
you remember that the donkey-boy's mother 
was a water-carrier, as are all of the Egyptian 
women of the lower classes, to a greater or 
less extent, and then you understand where 
your young companion got the deep-chested 
endurance that reminds you of an Arabian 
race-horse. And then, too, you find yourself 
considering whether, after all, we do not pay 
for our " modern conveniences " too high a 
price, and whether fewer stationary basins 
and more muscular exertion might not be 
good for American as well as for Egyptian 
women. 

At any rate, it is a good deal more rational 
than the first specimen of masculine activity 
which I happened to witness in Cairo. 
Among our travelling companions in our 
voyage across the Mediterranean was an Eng- 
lish clergyman, who had been for many years 
engaged in missionary work at Peshawur in 
India. He tarried for some days in Cairo, to 
make inquiries as to Mohammedanism in 
Egypt, and, at his suggestion, a few of us 
employed a part of our first day in Cairo in 
visiting the Mosque of the Dancing Dervishes. 
It was Friday, which is the Mohammedan 



FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 35 

Sabbath, and we reached the mosque just as 
the dervishes had begun their peculiar ser- 
vice. It has been so often described that I 
shall not attempt to depict its most eccentric 
characteristics; but I wish that American 
readers, who know it only from the clever, but 
chiefly ludicrous, descriptions of their literary 
countrymen or others, could read the admir- 
able work of the Rev. Mr. Hughes (the Eng- 
lish clergyman who accompanied us), if only 
for the insight which it gives into the religious 
significance of this strange and apparently 
meaningless rite. The Dancing Dervishes 
are a monastic order, living in community, 
and holding to certain doctrines common to 
the mystics and quietists. Their not un- 
graceful and evenly-protracted motion, which 
is maintained without any sound- on the part 
of the performers (although it is accompanied 
by the dismal tintinnabulation of an Egyptian 
orchestra, and the monotonous and droning 
chant of a few choristers seated in a gallery), 
is supposed somehow to sublimate the coarser 
part of their nature, and to lift them into 
a state of more intimate communion with 
heaven. It is easy to see how this impression 
obtains; for the continued and rapid revolu- 
tions which they maintain — revolutions so 



36 FIRST DA YS IN CAIRO. 

swift and protracted as to make one almost 
dizzy in observing them — must produce a 
condition of the brain in which clear percep- 
tion is simply impossible. It is not the only 
instance in which dizziness has been mistaken 
for spiritual exaltation, and we needed only 
to watch it for a little while to see that the 
participants were in profound earnest. It 
was at first a somewhat perplexing circum- 
stance that the principal personage who pre- 
sided over the exercises took no part in the 
dancing, but it was evident that he had 
reached an age when pirouetting at the rate 
of about forty revolutions a minute was 
wholly out of the question. He contented 
himself, therefore, with occasionally advancing 
from a richly-dyed wool mat at the edge of 
the circle of dancers, on which, at the begin- 
ning of the exercises, he had taken his stand, 
and making a slight reverence to the dancers, 
which was immediately acknowledged on their 
part by a very profound obeisance. 

As I have said, there is enough that is ludi- 
crous in this service to impress the most 
serious observer ; but it was equally impossi- 
ble, after the first sensation of the intense ab- 
surdity of the spectacle of a dozen or more 
full-grown men whirling rapidly upon their 



FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 



37 



toes, not to be profoundly saddened by it. A 
mechanical exercise of the body as an act of 
religious worship must necessarily be a mel- 
ancholy sight, just in proportion as it is 
obviously serious. And of the seriousness of 
these Dancing Dervishes there could be no 
doubt. There was among them a youth 
whose face was a study for a painter. He 
had scarcely passed the age of boyhood, but 
his rapt and absorbed expression, when con- 
trasted with the duller and more vacant 
countenances of his fellow-worshippers, re- 
minded one of Dore's wonderful pictures of 
the neophyte, in which a young monk with 
thoughtful and far-seeing gaze is seated amid 
a group of drowsy and drowsing fellow- 
worshippers of the same order. What a 
misdirection of spiritual aspirations ! What 
a waste of fine powers, too, perhaps— powers 
which, more worthily directed, might have 
lifted more than one of his countrymen to a 
loftier and worthier conception of the God 
whom they and he professed to honor. 

Not that the Mohammedan faith is without 
some aspects worthy of imitation by persons 
who account themselves disciples of a purer 
faith. After concluding our negotiations with 
our dragoman for our approaching voyage .up 



38 FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 

the Nile, one of the party added, "And now, 
Hassan, let us pray for a fair wind." "A fair 
wind?" said our mild and low-voiced Has- 
san interrogatively in reply. " Yes ; I mean 
a north wind." "Nay, sir," was Hassan's 
answer, " let us be content to believe that 
God will send us the right wind." "To be 
sure," was the somewhat impatient rejoinder 
to this, " but what we want is something dif- 
ferent from this wind," which was blowing at 
the moment steadily from the South. " Very 
true, sir," said Hassan, as mildly as before, 
but with a slight tone of rebuke in his voice, 
" but do you not believe, sir, that this wind 
has been the right wind for somebody to- 
day?" 

Of course, we are wont to explain all such 
expressions by referring them to the influence 
of that doctrine of fatalism which is so large 
an ingredient in the religious ideas of the 
average Moslem. Probably this is true 
enough, but one cannot help wishing some- 
times, when seeing the submission of the 
Egyptian to the inevitable or unavoidable, 
that they who despise his religion might yet 
somehow acquire a little more of his imper- 
turbable serenity and equanimity of temper. 
On our way to the Mosque of the Dervishes 



FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 39 

I was witness of a scene which curiously 
illustrated this. Except in that part of Cairo 
which had been built or rebuilt under the 
administration of the present Khedive, the 
streets are extremely narrow, and an ordinary 
carriage of European construction can often 
barely squeeze its way through them. As we 
approached the mosque our own carriage was 
detained by a block in the street, and while 
waiting for the way to be cleared, a proces- 
sion of camels, loaded with bales of straw, 
attempted to pass between us and the wall. 
Seated at the entrance of a shop, was a group 
of elderly men, between whom and ourselves 
the camels undertook to force their way. As 
the first one approached, one of the bales of 
straw which hung at his side struck the tur- 
ban of one of these men, and knocked it into 
his lap. Without even turning his head, he 
quietly restored it to its place, and went on 
with his conversation. The next camel that 
passed managed to tilt the bale of straw with 
which he was loaded so that it struck some 
projecting wood- work above the same man's 
head, and dusted him all over with a fine 
powder of dirty chaff. As before, however, 
he made no sign, and I was admiring his 
placid composure, when a third camel, ap- 



40 FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 

proaching, contrived to convert his bale of 
straw into a most effective catapult, with 
which, striking the patient tradesman square- 
ly in the back, he knocked him and his 
chair completely over. Now, said I, we 
shall hear what an Oriental can do in the 
way of anathema when he is aroused. 
But no ; the elderly victim of these repeated 
assaults simply gathered himself up, shook 
the dust and chaff from the skirts of his gar- 
ments, and sat down, without a word. 

There is, to be sure, another side to this, 
which is not so attractive. One is constantly 
pained, in Egypt, to see the apathy of most 
people as to what Mr. Greg has called " reme- 
diable evils." Dirt, and the diseases which 
are simply consequent upon dirt, are among 
these, and it is deplorable to see how utterly 
indifferent people are to dirt when there is 
not the slightest excuse for it. With the very 
poor, who are in the vast majority, and who 
live in the most wretched hovels, which are 
little more than mud huts, neatness or even 
cleanliness is scarcely possible ; but it is often 
as rare among those who are well to do and 
who have both means and servants at their 
command. At the request of the ladies of 
our party, our dragoman brought his wife and 



FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 41 

infant to see them, and it was hard to say 
which was the more noticeable, the costliness 
and elegance of the lady's attire or the dirty 
and neglected appearance of her child. It 
was quite in vain that an attempt was made 
to instil into the mind of this Egyptian 
mother some American ideas of neatness, and 
some one dryly suggested that it was a gracious 
providence which ordered that Moses in his 
infancy should have fallen into the hands of 
his own mother as his nurse, instead of having 
had to struggle up to manhood through suc- 
cessive and superincumbent layers of Egyp- 
tian household dirt. When it was intimated 
to our native visitor that she might at least so 
far exert herself as to keep the flies out of her 
baby's eyes, the suggestion was received with 
a chorus of laughter from herself and her 
attendants. And yet the simple neglect to do 
this thing is one of the most fruitful causes 
in propagating the national scourge of oph- 
thalmia with which Egyptians are so commonly 
affected. 

What seems to be wanted, therefore, if 
Egypt is ever to be restored to anything like 
its former greatness, is to awaken in the 
breasts of its people a certain measure of 
discontent with things as they are. Could 



42 FIRST DAYS IN CAIRO. 

this be combined with that absence of irrita- 
bility, and that patience under evils which are 
not remediable, they would certainly be one 
of the most successful as well as most agree- 
able peoples under the sun. The nation that 
built the Pyramids (whether we choose to 
accept Mr. Piazzi Smith's view, and find in 
those huge structures the key to almost all 
scientific and theological mysteries or not) 
must have exceptional capabilities of achieve- 
ment; and although one cannot admire the 
austere exactions in the way of taxation which 
characterize the government of the present 
Khedive, it is still matter for congratulation 
that he has shown himself so ready to learn 
of other nations, and has already done so 
much to better the sanitary condition of his 
capital, if no more. It is not a great while 
since the plague was a periodic visitation in 
Cairo ; but the Khedive has, by straightening 
its streets and tearing down large masses of 
fever-breeding dwellings, really inaugurated a 
new system of ventilation, and Europeans 
now pass the Summer there with as little risk, 
and with less discomfort, they maintain, than 
we do at home. " Do you not find the Sum- 
mer heats very trying? " I asked of Dr. Lan- 
sing, the head of the American mission here. 



AN ARAB TEMPLE. 43 

"Somewhat so, at times," was his answer, 
" but, on the whole, less so than those of New 
York." And if it were otherwise, the per- 
manent resident has only to retire to north- 
ern Syria, where the perpetual snows of 
Mount Lebanon will give him beneath its 
shadow, as I am assured by those who habitu- 
ally resort to it, one of the most bracing and 
delightful climates in the world. 



V. 

A Day in the Mosque of Mohammed Alt. 

Mention has already been made of a service 
which some of us witnessed in a Mosque of 
the Dancing Dervishes on the day of our ar- 
rival in Cairo. I did not, however, refer to 
the building, because it was in every way in- 
significant and ordinary ; but in this respect 
the dervishes' mosques, whether of the dancing 
or howling fraternities, are utterly unlike many 



44 AN ARAB TEMPLE. 

of the Mohammedan places of worship in Cairo, 
which are singularly impressive and beautiful. 
The first of these which I happened to see 
was the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, which is 
situated within the enclosure known as the 
Citadel, built by Saladin in n 66, of stone 
brought from the small Pyramids of Geezeh. 
Since my visit to it I have seen every other 
mosque with any pretensions to architectural 
beauty in Cairo, only to return to it from all 
of them with increased delight and admira- 
tion. I know how heretical this opinion will 
seem to many travellers in Egypt, for is it 
not written in " Murray " that " it has not the 
pure Oriental character of other works in 
Cairo," that "its minarets, which are of the 
Turkish extinguisher order, are painfully 
elongated, in defiance of all proportion," that 
"the decoration of the interior is in very bad 
taste, and the wretched lanterns strung about 
in every direction help to offend the eye ? " 
Such dogmatic criticism, generously sprinkled 
with vigorous adjectives, is sufficient to silence 
the most enthusiastic admiration, and I was 
not altogether surprised to hear an accom- 
plished American whom I met in the mosque 
— and who, if I were to mention his name, 
would be universally credited with abundant 



AN ARAB TEMPLE. 



45 



courage of opinion — reply doubtfully to my 
warm expressions of admiration, "Yes, but 
you know Murray says it is very bad." It 
is undoubtedly true that the Mosque of 
Mohammed Ali is less purely Oriental in its 
character than others in Cairo ; but then it is 
hard to understand why a people should not 
write its history in the structures which it 
rears as well as in the books which it prints ; 
and as Egypt has more than once known the 
presence of western conquerors, it is scarcely 
surprising that something that is not wholly 
Oriental should reveal itself here and there in 
her architecture. That there is anything in- 
congruous with its surroundings or inharmoni- 
ous in itself, to be found in this noble mosque 
I venture respectfully to deny. As to its in- 
terior decoration, it would perhaps be a very 
fair question, What, in the adornment of an 
eastern mosque, is good taste ? There is a 
great deal, unquestionably, that is coarse and 
crude, but in this respect there is nothing that, 
compared with multitudes of famous buildings 
in Egypt, is exceptional, and while the details 
are often lacking in elegance and delicacy the 
general effect is full of dignity and genuine 
grandeur. 

As you put off your shoes at the outer door 



46 AN ARAB TEMPLE. 

of the mosque you enter a beautiful marble- 
paved court, or cloister, the whole aspect of 
which appeals alike to your sentiment of 
reverence and your love of artistic fitness. It 
is so absolutely pure and white and stainless 
that you own instinctively that to tread its 
precincts with shoes stained 'with the travel 
of the dusty streets would be indeed a verita- 
ble profanation. You go to the graceful 
fountain which stands in the centre, honoring 
the Moslem reverence that will not enter its 
holy place with unwashed hands or feet ; and 
when one stands within the richly-decorated 
doorway he must be dull or prejudiced in- 
deed if he does not confess to the combined 
sense of majesty and splendor with which 
its lofty proportions and brilliant coloring fill 
his mind. Even the "wretched lanterns," 
which are simply globes of clear glass, with- 
out the faintest hint of color or decoration, 
somehow fell in, to my barbaric and Ameri- 
can vision, with the general veneration for 
light as a symbol of the Source of light which 
is so characteristic of all eastern religions, 
and scarcely less of that great body of east- 
ern Christians whom we know generally as 
the Greek Church. Indeed, it seemed at first 
a curious, but, after a few moments' reflection, 



AN ARAB TEMPLE. 47 

not an unnatural association of ideas to find 
myself comparing the Mosque of Mohammed 
Ali with the famous Russo-Greek church 
known as St. Isaac's, which I had seen a few 
months before in St. Petersburg. The latter 
is undoubtedly one of the great ecclesiastical 
structures of the world, and yet I am con- 
strained to own that it never produced upon 
me the effect of the Mosque of the Citadel 
(as it is more familiarly called) in Cairo. The 
sense of height, of splendor and religious 
appropriateness, instead of diminishing con- 
tinually increased, and one could understand 
and pardon the impulsiveness of a somewhat 
effusive English lady who, during our stay at 
Cairo, was seen to prostrate herself in the 
mosque in Oriental fervor of posture and mien. 
Undoubtedly this feeling, whether experi- 
enced in the Mosque of Mohammed Ali or 
any other, is in part to be explained by the 
contagion of example. Somebody has said 
that there is a way of participating in public 
worship among Christian nations which, if 
only it could generally obtain, would compel 
imitation from lookers-on. And one could 
understand this in watching the individual 
Mohammedan worshipper. Unfamiliar as 
must be Frank faces and Frank costumes — 



48 AN ARAB TEMPLE. 

unwelcome as must be, according to all the 
ideas of the Moslem, the presence of Frank 
' women — yet the worshippers in the Mosque 
of Mohammed Ali never turned their heads, 
or evinced in any way the slightest con- 
sciousness of our presence. On the floor 
of the vast building, which was unincum- 
bered with any pews, chairs, or sittings of 
any sort, and covered only with Turkish 
rugs or carpets scattered here and there, 
they were dotted, kneeling, standing, or 
prostrate with their foreheads to the ground, 
and wearing an air of the most profound 
seriousness and intentness. It was just at 
sunset, and the lofty building was flooded 
with the last gleams of the departing day; 
but the worshippers, as they prayed here and 
there, were turned all alike with their faces 
toward the East. I wish I could at all de- 
scribe the expression of those faces. I have 
spoken of their intentness, but the word is 
equally feeble and insufficient. It was at 
once absorbed, inquisitive, and penetrating; 
and as one stood watching the dusky coun- 
tenances turned so fixedly toward the blank 
wall a few yards distant, he almost turned to 
see what it was beyond that blank wall 
which the Arab devotee seemed to be gaz- 



AN ARAB TEMPLE. 49 

ing at so earnestly. One of the ninety-nine 
names of God in the Mohammedan ritual 
is " The Revealer," and we could not but 
breathe the prayer that somehow He whom 
they so blindly sought might show Himself 
to these simple but most fervent worshippers. 

As we lingered to watch them, two or 
three young men, pilgrims on their way to 
make their annual visit to the tomb of the 
prophet at Mecca, entered the mosque, evi- 
dently for the first time. Children of the 
desert, as their whole garb and bearing 
showed them to be, their air and conduct 
were precisely such as one would expect 
from children. They fingered curiously the 
railing of the enclosure within which is Mo- 
hammed Ali's tomb, and wandered around 
the whole interior circumference of the 
building, submitting everything that they 
saw to the double test of sight and touch. 
Nothing escaped them, and it was only 
when they had thoroughly satisfied their cu- 
riosity that it occurred to them to think of 
their devotions. 

Nothing could be more different than the 
scene which, when we turned to a corner of 
the mosque near the tomb of the founder, 
confronted us. In the centre of a small 



50 AN ARAB TEMPLE, 

group who were gathered about him in 
half-kneeling, half-sitting postures, sat an 
elderly man upon a rug, which he had evi- 
dently brought with him, expounding the 
Koran. Most of his handful of hearers had 
copies of the Koran, with which they followed 
him, and many of them did not hesitate to 
interrupt him repeatedly with questions. It 
was a scene alike for the painter and the stu- 
dent. There were no two attitudes alike, and 
yet all were equally graceful and easy. Here 
and there was a pupil whose eager face and 
incessantly acquiescent nod made one envy 
the facility and the enthusiasm with which he 
followed his preceptor ; and what was most 
curious, though the whole process of ex- 
pounding and hearing and answering ques- 
tions was going on in an ordinary colloquial 
tone, none of the adjacent worshippers 
seemed to be in the slightest degree dis- 
turbed by it. A looker-on would have 
discovered in the whole scene a suggestion 
worthy of the consideration of the advo- 
cates, in Christian lands, of what are known 
as free and open churches. In all the vast 
area there were, as I have said, no seats, 
benches, or chairs, no reserved places which 
could be purchased by wealth or caste. The 



THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 51 

whole was covered with carpets, and was 
equally free to all ; and the opportunities 
which this absence of fixtures afforded for 
utilizing any part of the sacred edifice in the 
way I have indicated for little knots of stu- 
dents of their sacred volume, above all, the 
absolute freedom with which, at all hours of 
the day, every part of the splendid building 
was placed at the unreserved disposal of the 
humblest worshipper, suggested that here, 
too, was something worthy of the imitation 
of those who happen to be the guardians of 
the sacred buildings of a purer faith. 



VI. 



Scenes in Egypfs University — A Notable 
Temple. 

It would not "be easy to imagine a greater 
contrast to the scene of dignified and hushed 
quietude which we found in the Mosque 



52 THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 

of the Citadel than that which saluted us, 
a few days later, when we went to visi} the 
Mosque of Azhar, or the " Splendid Mosque," 
as it is called. 

Here, certainly, no one could find fault 
with the architecture on the score of its de- 
parture from the traditions of Oriental art; 
and while the more than four hundred col- 
umns with which its interior is adorned break 
up the perspective in a somewhat vexatious 
way, they produce a labyrinthian effect which 
is very pleasing and novel. They are of 
granite, porphyry, and marble taken from old 
Egyptian temples, and as one threaded his 
way among them the very natural speculation 
arose : What if these relics of ancient great- 
ness could each have for a little while the 
gift of speech and relate to the traveller who 
visits them to-day the scenes and events of 
other and grander days in which they bore 
their part ! What " sermons in stones " one 
might hearken to if only they could tell us 
where originally they stood, and of what 
long ago they were the witnesses ! 

Surely those scenes must have been widely 
different from the surroundings amidst which 
they find themselves to-day, for at present 
the Mosque of Azhar is also the College of 



THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 53 

Cairo, and, in fact, the principal University of 
the East. It includes within itself two large 
courts, with which are connected several 
smaller porticoes, and when we entered it all 
these were thronged with students from all 
parts of Egypt and the East, either gathered 
about their favorite professors or engaged in 
study. Whatever else they may or may not 
acquire, it would be impossible to study at 
all amid such a Babel of sounds without 
sooner or later acquiring a considerable 
power of abstracting the mind from outward 
interruptions. At the first glance the great 
court which we entered seemed to be a scene 
of utter confusion. The first group which 
caught my eye consisted of two young gentle- 
men who, having reached a point of differ- 
ence as to the interpretation of the Koran, 
which was lying at their feet, were engaged, 
with considerable vigor, both of speech and 
action, in beating their ideas into each others' 
heads. Having continued this process for 
some time, and being apparently as far from 
a harmonious conclusion of their dispute as 
when they began, suddenly, without a moment's 
warning, each spat in the other's face, and 
then they both straightway sat down in the 
most amicable fashion, as if this exchange of 



54 THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 

insults had somehow cleared the air, and 
brought them to a state of cordial and com- 
plete theological agreement. 

Passing on, we came to another group of 
still younger students, who were tormenting 
one of their number by snatching his fez, or 
tarboosh, from his head, and tossing it from 
hand to hand. I was reflecting how entirely 
western and familiar was the aspect of this 
youthful sport, when an official personage 
suddenly appeared in the midst of the group, 
and with a few well-directed blows from a 
heavy knotted rope sent them flying in all 
directions. But, amid all this confusion, 
groups of middle-aged men engaged in in- 
tensely earnest debate, or solitary students 
poring over their books, and reading or 
memorizing, apparently in utter unconscious- 
ness of what was going on about them, were 
to be seen on every hand. The University 
was formerly handsomely endowed, but was 
deprived of its endowments by the late 
Mohammed AH, and at present the professors 
receive no salaries, neither do the students 
pay any fees. The professors, however, are 
not debarred from taking private pupils, after 
the manner of an English parson or Univer- 
sity tutor, and by these means and from 



THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 55 

presents both they and the students maintain 
themselves. At present there are ten thou- 
sand students in the University ; but it is to 
be feared that this does not so much argue a 
zeal for learning as a desire to escape the 
military conscription, which bears sometimes 
with cruel hardship upon a population so 
small as that of Egypt, and from which 
students in the national University are 
exempt. 

I should be sorry, however, to be under- 
stood as implying that there is no thirst for 
learning among the Egyptians, and still less 
that there is any lack of a keen and intelli- 
gent appreciation of its value in these modern 
days. An American officer, of high rank in 
the service of the Khedive, informed me that 
the latter asked him, some time ago, " What 
impressed him as the most conspicuous defect 
in his army ? " Said my countryman, in re- 
ply, " This, your Highness : that it is governed 
by civilians,'* and then went on to explain, 
as his meaning in making such an answer, 
that the officers of the army were generally 
unable to read and write, and were almost 
entirely dependent upon their clerks, who, 
although they were civilians, thus acquired 
and exercised an undue influence. The very 



56 THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 

next day an order was issued making the 
ability to read and write an absolute condi- 
tion of promotion in the military service ; 
and in a little while this was followed by an 
order making all furloughs and other special 
privileges depend upon a similar condition. 
As a consequence, in a few weeks the entire 
army was turned into a school, and in a year 
from the date of this conversation there were 
exactly forty-five men in the whole Egyptian 
service who could neither read nor write. It 
is impossible to hear of one such fact without 
realizing how excellent must be the natural 
capabilities of a people who, after reach- 
ing adult years, can acquire knowledge so 
rapidly. 

This digression has led me a little way 
from the topic to which I had meant to con- 
fine myself in this chapter — the Mosques of 
Cairo ; and I have left myself room to speak 
only of one other, the Mosque of Hassaneyn, 
a very beautiful building and one of peculiar 
sacredness, from its containing as sacred rel- 
ics the head of Hoseyn and the hand of 
Hasan. Into the Mosque of the Citadel, as 
well as some others, we had obtained admis- 
sion without difficulty; but here, as also at 
the Mosque of Azhar, we were obliged to 



THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 57 

procure a firman, and also the attendance of 
an officer from the zaptieh, or police station ; 
and even then our application for admission 
was evidently not regarded with favor. In- 
deed, so far did this distrustful scrutiny go in 
the Mosque of Hassaneyn that one of the 
officers, after requesting me to uncover my 
head, repeated the request to a lady of the 
party who wore a very broad brimmed and 
rather conspicuous hat. I thought of quot- 
ing St. Paul on the indecorum of allowing 
women to be uncovered in the church, but 
distrusting the officer's knowledge of the 
English version, and being unable to give 
him the Arabic, I contented myself with a 
frown and a negative gesture, to which he 
yielded with the most cheerful good humor, 
as though he had simply been testing the 
readiness of the Frank to yield. 

The mosque has recently been restored, 
and is a very perfect and exquisitely beautiful 
specimen of Oriental architecture. Its deco- 
rations in alabaster and in different colored 
marbles are especially rich, and the whole 
wore an air of elegance and refinement of 
decoration which are not common in Egyp- 
tian architecture. We lingered amid its 
beautiful rows of columns, and watched the 



58 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

long lines of devotees either kneeling or 
standing in front of the shrines of El Hasan 
and El Hoseyn, until the declining rays of 
the sun reminded us that the day was draw- 
ing to its close, and that we must hasten, 
before darkness set in, to return to our 
hotel. 



VII. 

The Beginning of a Pilgrimage to Mecca — 
The Procession in the Streets of Cairo — 
Decay of Enthusiasm. 

It is a piece of good fortune to see in Cairo 
any unusual ceremony in connection with the 
Mohammedan religion ; for while it may be 
true that no direct attempts to weaken the 
hold of Mohammedanism upon its disciples 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 59 

have been greatly successful, it is equally true 
that various indirect influences have con- 
spired insensibly to modify and discourage 
the enthusiasm of its devotees. Year by 
year, therefore, the pomp and splendor of 
religious processions is diminishing, and it 
cannot be many years before many customs 
which are still in vogue among the more de- 
vout Moslems will have largely disappeared. 
I shall speak of the reasons for this further 
on, but I do not believe there is much doubt 
about the fact, and in view of it it was matter 
for congratulation that soon after our arrival 
in Cairo there occurred the day set apart for 
the annual departure of the pilgrims to Mecca. 
This pilgrimage is made obligatory, at least 
once in a lifetime, upon every Mohammedan. 
It is, however, performed only by a small 
proportion of those persons who profess that 
faith, the larger number excusing themselves 
on the ground of domestic or business en- 
gagements, and wealthy people being in the 
habit of buying themselves off from the duty 
by various benefactions to the poor. The 
number who do go, however, is still so con- 
siderable as to make an imposing procession ; 
and though when I saw it this procession was 
simply moving from the city to a point a few 



60 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

miles without the walls, there to await the 
accretions which come to it daily until its 
departure, about two or three weeks later, it ' 
was already remarkable both for numbers and 
enthusiasm. 

It was early in the day when we left our 
hotel to go to an open space near the Citadel, 
from which the procession starts. As we 
drove through the streets it was evident that 
the spectacle was one of general interest, for 
they were lined with throngs of people who 
stood or sat in groups or masses, arranged as 
picturesquely as if they had been placed for 
the study of a painter. It was a series of 
effects such as one could never hope to see at 
home. A crowd with us, and, above all, a 
street crowd, is as unwholesome an object, 
whether to the eye or ear, as one cares to 
meet with; but here there was no rough 
boisterousness and no bad costuming. Closely 
analyzed, there would have been found much 
less clothing and far more rags than with us ; 
but even the water-carriers and fellah-women, 
whose whole drapery consisted of one ragged 
square of dirty blue or brown cotton cloth, 
managed to hang it about them with a com- 
bined grace and freedom which might well 
have been the envy of a sculptor and the 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 6l 

despair of a mantua-maker. Then the fas- 
cinating bits of color in scarf or kaftan or 
turban, common enough, perhaps, in texture, 
when closely examined, but somehow almost 
luminous in that clear Egyptian sunshine — all 
this went to make up a picture of mingled 
movement and repose so bright and warm 
and vivid that the eye could not delight in it 
enough. 

We were soon to see something much more 
imposing, if not so brilliant. After a short 
drive our carriage stopped in the neighbor- 
hood of the Mosque of the Citadel, where, 
in an open pavilion, closed on three of its 
sides and open on the other, were arranged 
seats or thrones for the Khedive and for the 
two princes, his sons, as well as places for the 
officers of the government and other distin- 
guished guests. Near these we found a group 
of the representatives of our own and foreign 
powers, and being placed near them we had 
leisure to take in the whole scene. 

It was full of life, and to a stranger, of 
course, full of surprises. One by one the 
members of the household of the Khedive 
and of the Cabinet arrived and took their 
places amid a profusion of salaamings which 
were repeated till they became absurd. Most 



62 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

of these personages were of the light yellow 
tint which is distinctive of the people of the 
Delta, and which is often pleasing to the eye 
when seen in connection with a rich Oriental 
costume; but among them there arrived an 
old gentleman whom a profane American near 
me characterized as an " out-and-out Fifteenth 
Amendment party," and whose color would 
have made an ebony statue turn pale. With 
his grizzled pate and Ethiopian features, and, 
worst of all, with the shambling, shuffling 
gait which seems to be a distinctive trait of 
the negro, he was a veritable Sambo ; but we 
were rather surprised to hear that he was a 
conquered sovereign, whose domains the 
Khedive had " annexed," and who was passing 
the remainder of his days very much more 
comfortably than he ever lived before, doubt- 
less, but rather ignominiously, nevertheless, 
as a state prisoner of the ruler of Egypt. He 
was received with every mark of ceremony, 
and conducted to a seat from which he stared 
at a scene that was scarcely less novel to him 
than to us. 

We had not long to wait for the procession. 
A distant sound of drums, a stir among the 
crowd who fringed the street or stood clustered 
like bees upon the neighboring hillocks of sand 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 63 

and rubbish, and we descried in the distance 
the approach of military, and the undulating 
movements of a number of people who were 
riding upon camels. A fragment of the pro- 
cession, composed of shabbily-dressed pil- 
grims, soon after filed past us, and these were 
followed by more military and by a number 
of mounted men riding on the camels we had 
seen approaching, and beating the huge 
copper kettle-drums whose notes we had 
heard in the distance, and which were fastened 
to their saddles. Then there were more 
camels, some of them dyed with senna and 
some adorned with palms or bells. The 
hardships of the pilgrimage were expressively 
prefigured by water-skins borne by other 
camels; and other baggage, made necessary 
by the long stretches of travel across the 
desert, was loaded also upon camels. Of 
course, there were a considerable number of 
dervishes, who from the noise they made led 
us to believe that they belonged to the howl- 
ing rather than the dancing denomination of 
"that sect, and following these came some 
wild-looking Arabs, regular Bedouins, like 
those we had seen a few days before in the 
Mosque of the Citadel. 

There was so much confusion and irregu- 



64 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

larity in the movements of the procession 
that it was impossible to distinguish its various 
details even if it had not required a life-long 
acquaintance with Cairene Mohammedanism 
to have recognized them. We could see, 
however, that there was a gradual increase of 
splendor and solemnity, and of eager expec- 
tancy on the part of the people who were 
looking on, until suddenly, amid a shrill shout 
of excited enthusiasm, there swung or rolled 
into sight a huge structure, borne upon the 
back of a dromedary, which we were told was 
the covering for the tomb of the Prophet, on 
its way to be placed over his sacred resting- 
place at Mecca. This structure consisted of 
a square framework of wood with a pyramidal 
top, the whole having a cloth covering pro- 
fusely embroidered with inscriptions in Arabic 
text, wrought in gold upon a ground of red or 
green silk, and ornamented with a silk fringe 
and tassels surmounted by silver bells. It 
contained nothing, we understood, but had 
fastened to its exterior two copies of the 
Koran, one in book form and the other written 
upon a scroll. 

Nothing could exceed the reverence with 
which this structure was treated, or the eager- 
ness with which the crowd pressed near to 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 65 

see and, if possible, to touch it. It seemed 
perfectly reasonable, therefore, to think it, as 
we had been told that it was, the covering 
intended for the Prophet's tomb ; but an 
authority whom, so far as I know, no one has 
as yet ventured to dispute— I mean the 
author of " The Modern Egyptians " — de- 
clares that this is a traveller's error, and that 
the mahmal (which is the name of the struct- 
ure in question) has nothing to do with the 
tomb of the Prophet, but has very different 
and much less sacred associations. Accord- 
ing to Lane, a beautiful Turkish female slave, 
who became wife of the Sultan Es-Saleh- 
Negur-ed-Deen, and who, on the death of 
his son, caused herself to be acknowledged 
as Queen of Egypt, performed the pilgrimage 
to Mecca in a magnificent hoddg (or covered 
litter) borne by a camel. This empty hoddg 
was for several successive years sent with the 
caravan, merely to lend a little more state and 
dignity to the procession. It is very easy to 
see how such a custom grew into a fixed 
usage, the hoddg becoming at length the em- 
blem of royalty, and thus associating the 
sovereign in the minds of the people with a 
leading ceremony of the national religion. 
I have no such knowledge as would war- 
5 



66 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

rant any distrust of this explanation of the 
mahmal, but it is difficult to believe that it is 
"only this and nothing more" that the com- 
mon people see in it ; for if the mahmal be 
nothing more than the Sultan's or Khedive's 
carriage, then there is a very curious differ- 
ence between the veneration which the people 
have for the royal conveyance when borne by 
a camel and when drawn by a pair of English 
coach horses. I saw the Khedive driving 
about Cairo in an extremely well-appointed 
coupe, but a large proportion of his subjects 
did not even turn to look at it, and I am very 
sure that the most enthusiastic loyalist in 
Egypt never embraced its panels or kissed its 
wheels. Something else, then, than the 
impulse of homage to royalty drew forth 
those ardent demonstrations toward the 
mahmal which we saw among the Cairene 
spectators of the pilgrimage to Mecca, and it 
is hard to believe that they themselves had 
not come to cherish the impression that it 
had some very close association with the 
tomb of their Prophet. 

At any rate, it was much the most conspic- 
uous feature in the procession, excepting, 
perhaps, a mounted pilgrim whose extremely 
substantial outlines had little in common with 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 6 J 

the ethereal interests of a religious devotee. 
This pilgrim was a dervish, who has made 
the pilgrimage to Mecca annually for thirty 
years, and who makes the whole journey in a 
state of perpetual motion^ and in a costume 
best expressed by the algebraic sign minus. 
Indeed, to his waist this gentleman presented 
the spectacle of unadorned nature, and as he 
was extremely fat, he reminded one, in his 
sitting posture, with his limbs drawn up, of 
the principal deity in a Chinese Joss-house. 
But what was chiefly noticeable was the inces- 
sant movement of the head and whole figure, 
from the waist up. This was produced by 
swaying or rather rolling the head and 
shoulders so as to make them describe, as 
nearly as possible, a circle, and with such 
constancy as must very soon have produced 
in any ordinary brain extreme dizziness. 
When to this was added the undulatory or 
rather jerky motion of the dromedary on 
which the devotee was seated, the whole was 
almost sufficient to make the mere spectator 
sea-sick. As to the condition in which, after 
forty successive days of such exercise, the 
dervish arrived at Mecca, one did not dare to 
speculate. If he had any intelligent capacity 
with which to perform his devotions it must 



68 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

have been because, as was the belief of the 
old Greeks in regard to the affections, the 
lodging-place of his thinking powers was 
much nearer than is usual to the centre of 
his system. 

Following the dervish there came several 
other camels laden with the luggage of the 
Emir-el-H6gg, or Chief of the Pilgrims, his 
litter, etc., and then one bearing the khazneh, 
or chest containing the money for defraying 
such expenses of the pilgrimage as fall upon 
the government. As this approached the 
pavilion in which we were seated, one of the 
princes advanced and placed a purse in the 
hand of its rider, at the same time kissing a 
sacred relic or charm which hung suspended 
from the neck of the dromedary. Then 
there followed some more military, and the 
usual crowd of boys and men, and the pro- 
cession passed out of sight on its way to the 
extra-mural camp. 

As it vanished, the reflection with which I 
began this letter instinctively recurred to the ' 
mind. I felt that it was a spectacle whose 
chances of repetition are annually diminish- 
ing. The age of religious pilgrimages has 
largely gone by, and though here and there, 
as in France lately, there may be a spasmodic 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 6g 

revival of such a custom, the amused curios- 
ity with which even the great majority of sin- 
cerely religious people look on is an indica- 
tion of the hopeless decay of the spirit which 
once inspired it. That spirit once burnt as 
ardently in the breasts of our forefathers as 
in the breast of the most enthusiastic Moslem 
to-day ; but at the root of it there lay a faith 
in the religious efficacy of such pilgrimages 
which has long ago died out in Christian 
lands, and which is already dying in lands 
that are not Christian. When modern trav- 
ellers can make a tour in what we have been 
wont to call the Holy Land the framework on 
which to construct a comic history of their 
adventures, we are somewhat rudely and 
painfully awakened to the fact that belief in 
the efficacy of a journey to sacred scenes and 
sacred places is wellnigh extinct, and that 
the world has come to understand that unless 
it has grasped the lesson of a good man's life, 
or mastered the meaning of his teachings, it 
will be of small avail that it makes pilgrim- 
ages to his tomb or says prayers to his ashes. 
It may be said that these are western and 
not eastern ideas, and that there is no evi- 
dence that there is any decay of enthusiasm 
as to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca on the 



70 A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 

part of the modern Egyptian. It would be 
answer enough to this to say that the most 
exact and careful observer of modern Egypt 
and its manners and customs — I mean the 
late Mr. Lane — begins his own account of 
the pilgrimage to Mecca by saying : " As this 
procession is conducted with less pomp in 
almost every successive year " (the italics are 
my own), " I shall describe it as I first wit- 
nessed it during my first visit to Egypt." 
But if there were no such testimony, it would 
be only necessary to compare the accounts of 
travellers written twenty years ago with what 
was to be seen in Cairo on the morning to 
which I refer. Indeed, I could not but think 
that to the devouter Oriental minds who were 
present with us on that November morning 
under the pavilion in the Citadel, the most 
conspicuous accessories of the spectacle must 
have been at once painful and offensive in 
their significance. 

In the first place, the Khedive himself was 
conspicuous by his absence. A ceremony 
which every Mohammedan had been trained 
to regard as of profound import and solem- 
nity was treated by him as having so little of 
either that he did not hesitate to neglect it 
for the merely routine duties of his office ; 



A PILGRIM PROCESSION. 71 

and the persons who represented him on the 
sacred occasion were, as it seemed to a looker- 
on, unconsciously but most expressively in- 
dicating their want of sympathy with the 
occasion and its surroundings. As they rolled 
up to the pavilion one after another, in their 
severely simple and sombre English carriages, 
with a smart English groom upon the box, 
and with an entire establishment which looked 
as if it had been transported complete from 
Hyde Park, one could not help wondering 
how it looked to those who had been accus- 
tomed to see royalty riding on white asses or 
mounted on an Arab barb. Then, too, the 
costumes of the Princes and Pashas, which 
were as hideously angular and European in 
cut and material as could be conceived, giv- 
ing these dusky-skinned personages, with 
their single-breasted black frock-coats and 
trousers and red fezes, the effect of being a 
number of orthodox divines in rather fancy 
smoking-caps — what did it all mean but that 
the manners (that is, the ideas, for the two 
forever go together) of the West are insensi- 
bly but surely and steadily modifying those 
of the East, and that other and more sacred 
customs than those of dress and equipage 
will, erelong, decline and disappear before 



72 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

the pushing and aggressive civilization of the 
Frank ? 

If, therefore, one would see the procession 
of the pilgrims to Mecca set forth from Cairo 
with any considerable part of its old splendor 
and ceremony, let him not postpone doing so 
too long ; and when at length it shall become 
to the Mohammedan no more than such a 
memory as to-day the Crusades are to Chris- 
tendom, let us hope that some worthier and 
loftier enthusiasm may permanently replace 
it. 



VIII. 



Queer Experiences of an American in the 
Mooskee. 



There is a story told of a wide-awake 
American who, discovering in Paris some very 
pretty pencil cases at five francs apiece, 
bought a half dozen of them with the inten- 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 73 

tion of using them as gifts to a few of the 
friends he had left behind him. They were 
made upon a simple but admirable mechani- 
cal principle, and, if not of solid gold, looked 
enough like it to answer the demands of 
ordinary criticism. Best of all, they had the 
charm to the eye of their purchaser of abso- • 
lute novelty, and he drew a sigh of relief as 
he reflected that he had found something 
which inquisitive friendship at home had 
never even heard of. Reaching London on 
his way to New York, he was so fortunate as 
to find some more of them in a shop in Re- 
gent street, and it added to the satisfaction 
with which he bought them that the shopman 
there only asked him two shillings apiece 
for them. He eagerly bought another half 
dozen, and posted on to Liverpool to take 
ship for New York. Looking in at a shop 
window in Liverpool, while waiting for the 
hour when the steam-tug should leave 
Prince's dock, his eye fell upon some more 
pencil cases, and glad of an opportunity to 
reinforce his supply of an article for which 
he anticipated so considerable a demand, he 
entered the shop and began negotiations for 
one more half dozen. He had not caught 
the shopman's answer as to the price until 



74 SHOPPING IN GB AND CAIRO. 

the parcel was made up and placed in his 
hand. Drawing out his purse, therefore, he 
gave him an expressively interrogatory look 
which immediately drew forth the reply, 
"Eighteen pence apiece, sir." " Singular," 
said our countryman, somewhat surprised, 
" but it seems that the further one gets 
from Paris the cheaper articles of Parisian 
manufacture become. Five francs apiece in 
Paris for these pencils, two shillings apiece in 
London, and eighteen pence in Liverpool. 
At this rate, I should have done better by 
waiting until I reached New York." "You 
are about right, sir," said the shopman, who 
by this time had his money safe in his till. 
"You are about right, sir, for them pencils is 
all made in the States." 

The incident has an admonitory value as 
indicating the danger of buying anything 
abroad on the theory that it is unknown at 
home. In the matter of shops and their 
contents, Paris, London, and New York are 
wellnigh one, and it requires a sharp eye and 
an ample experience to discover anything in 
either of them that you may not find for sale 
in both the others. 

The traveller goes to the bazaars in Cairo, 
however, with the comfortable feeling that 



SHOPPING I 1ST GRAND CAIRO, 75 

Cairo is neither Paris, London, nor New 
York. To buy something there, he fully 
imagines, is to secure that which will have, 
at least, the charm of rarity. It is not un- 
likely that, when he gets home again, he will 
find himself mistaken; for, after all, the 
world is very small, and the products of Egypt 
and Syria are well-known commodities to 
our American commercial world ; but, not- 
withstanding this, shopping in Cairo has a 
fascination apart from what is bought, and 
any one who has neglected the Mooskee 
has missed one of the most characteristic 
experiences of eastern travel. The Mooskee 
is the shopkeeping quarter, and twisting 
through it are the narrow labyrinths in which 
some of the most exquisite textures which 
Oriental handiwork can fashion are to be 
bought. 

Nothing could be more opposed to our 
notion of shops and shopping than what one 
sees and does here. It shocks one's sense of 
fitness to find dirt and artistic excellence (and 
much that is sold in the bazaars at Cairo has 
not a little of artistic excellence) so close 
together ; but dirt is the dominating element 
in the Cairene bazaars. The street is simply 
a dusty alley, without the semblance of a 



76 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

pavement or the remotest suspicion of having 
ever been swept or cleaned. The fine sand 
of which it is formed is made into a paste 
three or four times a day by the activity of 
the Arab water-carriers, who, with their hog- 
skins upon their shoulders, give you the im- 
pression that they are carrying the bloated 
carcass of a dead pig. Into this paste are 
tramped the sweepings of shops and every 
other imaginable and unimaginable impurity 
which the broad hoofs of camels and the 
sharp heels of donkeys have, year after year, 
conspired to grind into a conglomerate that 
will one day be the despair of the geologist 
of the future. As you walk through it or 
over it you are reminded, moreover, that you 
have not all the dirt of Cairo under foot, but 
that a very large share of it forms a circulat- 
ing medium which is kept constantly in active 
movement upon the persons of its people. 
These jostle against you or are crowded into 
your unwilling embrace by a dense mass of 
moving life, composed of human beings of all 
ages and conditions, and quadrupeds, from 
the slouching, encrusted, and unmannerly 
dromedary, who ignores your right of way 
with the most serene contempt, all the way 
to the most miserable species of dog which 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 77 

can possibly, exist outside of Constantinople. 
Above your head, as you look up to escape 
the constant succession of blind, maimed, 
and unfortunate people who clamor as long 
as you are in sight for backsheesh, you observe 
that a ricketty, modern framework extends 
across the street from roof to roof, on which 
are loosely laid wooden slats to shut out the 
mid-day sun. It adds to your composure to 
see that most of these slats have been dis- 
placed by the wind, and that a breath of air, 
apparently, will be sufficient to send them 
rattling down from a height of fifty feet upon 
your head. 

At such a moment you turn to the threshold 
of the shop to which you have been led, in 
the hope that there at least you will find 
something more attractive ; but even the shop 
is, or seems to be, a shabby imposture. It is 
only a wretched hole in the wall, and its 
entire resources seem to be a half-dozen 
pieces of dusty stuff-goods. You look long 
enough to take in the situation and turn to 
walk away in disgust. Your dragoman, how- 
ever, mildly begs that you will not be im- 
patient. " Seat yourself," he entreats, " upon 
the divan" — which is simply the edge of the 
raised platform that forms the floor of the 



78 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

shop (on which, meanwhile, the proprietor is 
sitting with an air often of profound indif- 
ference) — "and make known your wants." 
You wish to see some shawls. Your wish is 
translated to the merchant, and he rises, 
evincing now at length something of affable 
alacrity, and produces from some recess be- 
hind him a bundle. This is placed before 
you, and with abundant deliberation he ex- 
tracts from it and unfolds before you a — 
table-cover. For an instant it arrests your 
attention, and you look at it, especially if it 
be something unfamiliar, with a faint sign of 
interest. You are not going to housekeeping 
in Cairo, and you remind your dragoman that 
you asked not for table-cloths but for shawls. 
This being laboriously explained to the mer- 
chant, he smiles assentingly, and immediately 
produces another package of table-cloths, 
much rarer and handsomer than the others. 
" No ! No ! " you say impatiently, determined 
not to be lured in this way into unintentional 
extravagance, " shawls ! " " shawls ! " At once 
the table-cloths are shoved aside, and the 
merchant places another parcel before you, 
containing embroidered jackets. Cunning 
wretch ! It is as if he had been secretly 
advised of your weakness. As you have 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 79 

watched the gay equipages of his Highness 
the Khedive, and of the pashas who are 
attached to the court, nothing has impressed 
you so much as the rich and picturesque 
dress of the sets, or runner (most of the 
handsomer equipages preceded by two), whose 
fleet feet and sharp cries have announced 
their approach. Now, much the most splen- 
did part of the dress is the embroidered 
jacket, which may easily be made a striking 
feature of feminine costume ; and so you are 
in the toils, before you know it. One after 
another these gay and graceful vestments are 
turned over; in a few moments half a 
dozen have been put aside "on approbation," 
and the chances are a thousand to one that 
you will not be allowed to escape without 
taking them with you. 

The indulgence of this momentary weak- 
ness has, however, the usual effect of making 
you resolve upon unswerving firmness in the 
future. Once more you cry shall! shall 7 
(shawls! shawls!) in a tone as imperious as 
you can command. It makes no difference. 
When this placid Oriental has shown you 
everything that he has to sell, has exhausted 
every opportunity of inducing you to buy 
what you do not want, then he will produce 



80 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

what you ask for. At this point the contest 
assumes an entirely new character. You not 
only want a shawl, but a handsome one. Ap- 
parently, however, the dealer prefers to keep 
his handsome shawls and sell only those that 
are inferior. Of course this is a part of east- 
ern artifice, but underneath it there must 
exist, I think, something of that preference to 
cling to values in kind,- which is so distinctive 
of Oriental ideas of wealth. I shall not soon 
forget an afternoon which was passed before 
the shelves of a Cairene merchant whose 
whole stock in trade apparently consisted of 
two insignificant piles of cheap shawls, but 
who proved to be possessed of rarest fabrics 
of exquisite beauty, both of pattern and text- 
ure. If we had been drawing his teeth, one 
by one, he could not have surrendered them 
with greater reluctance than he evinced in 
producing his goods ; and when my compan- 
ion turned away at length without making 
any purchase, my own relief at the conclu- 
sion of the negotiations was not greater than 
that with which the shawl-dealer put away 
his goods and saw his chance of exchanging 
them for English sovereigns vanishing in the 
distance. To his view British gold had, ap- 
parently, a more doubtful value than his 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO, gj 

precious goods, and his consciousness of 
wealth was far deeper when turning them 
over on his shelves than in rattling any 
amount of money in his pocket. 

The first, and possibly the second, expe- ' 
rience of this kind has in it enough that is 
at once novel and amusing to make it at least 
endurable ; but when one has many purchases 
to make, and only a short time in which to 
make them, it becomes an almost intolerable 
vexation ; for when one has found the things 
he wants, the business of fixing upon their 
price and paying for them becomes a matter 
not merely of hours, but sometimes of days. 
The dealer invariably names a price which 
is double or treble the amount which he will 
accept, or which he expects you' to pay. 
Then comes the chaffering and huckstering 
in which eastern shopkeepers take such keen 
delight. You offer half what he asks, and 
he at once places the article in your hand, 
saying, " Take it, it is a gift," which is simply 
an expressive way of telling you that that 
is what your proposition would substantially 
amount to. Then there follows the panto- 
mime of silent departure on the one side, 
and glances of reproachful entreaty on the 
other. You turn to go, and have reached 



82 SHOPPING IK GRAND CAIRO. 

the middle of the street, when you hear 
some one crying : " Three hundred piasters ! " 
You had been asked four hundred at first, 
and had offered two. Thus reluctantly, and 
not until your morning has been wellnigh 
consumed, the merchant comes to terms, and 
you secure, at an expense of some hours' 
wrangling, what you could have purchased 
at home in ten minutes. A friend was waited 
upon at our hotel by an East India merchant, 
who brought with him several parcels of 
handsome goods. A selection was made 
from them of a number of articles, and the 
prices of them taken down from his lips, and 
added up in his presence. The sum total 
was rather large, and there is no doubt that 
he had not the slightest expectation of 
receiving it. He was offered one third, and 
refused it indignantly, retiring almost im- 
mediately with his parcels. I confess I 
thought the offer too little, and did not 
wonder that he refused it; but the event 
proved how little I was acquainted . with the 
ways of the eastern tradesman. The nego- 
tiation went on for nearly a week — the dealer 
coming and going with a patience which was 
wholly unintelligible to a western mind ; but 
at the end of that time he did what he meant 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 83 

to do all along, and accepted the sum origi- 
nally offered him. 

There is undoubtedly much in all this 
that is vexatious to persons to whom it is 
unfamiliar, but it is somewhat hasty to pro- 
nounce it, as many do, intentionally dis- 
honest. As I have intimated, a large element 
of the charm of traffic with these people is 
the encounter of wits for which it affords an 
opportunity, and in addition to this it must 
not be forgotten that, in the matter of those 
things especially which the traveller buys, 
there is not that close competition which so 
definitely fixes prices with us. Curiously- 
carved ivory, rare patterns in rugs and scarfs, 
odd devices in brass, silver, or gold, have a 
fluctuating value according to the necessi- 
ties of the dealer and the enthusiasm of the 
buyer. We are familiar enough at home 
with the same thing in connection with pict- 
ures, horses, and the like, and with us no 
one accounts a man dishonest because he 
chooses to put a " fancy " price upon his 
corner house or his country place, and then 
to take for either of them half as much as he 
asked at the beginning. 

It is in amusing inconsistency with these 
Oriental customs of buying and selling that 



84 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

one sometimes meets with an ingenious 
method by which the trader who makes his 
successive abatements saves at the same time 
his pride. A friend who was in search of 
antique coins, scarabczi, and the like, found 
in the possession of a shrewd Moslem a col- 
lection from which about half a dozen articles 
of different value were selected. The price 
demanded for them was twelve pounds ster- 
ling, and the sum offered was exactly hal£ 
that amount. Then ensued a scene in which 
wrangling, scuffling — everything, in fact, short 
of downright blows — formed a part. We were 
accompanied by a friend of the dealer's, who 
acted as interpreter, and who incontinently 
seized the desired articles, and laying down 
six sovereigns started to walk off with them. 
At once the dealer closed with him, and the 
two wrestled for their possession with a 
vehemence of speech and gesture which 
threatened a more violent contention. It 
was all purely dramatic. Suddenly the dealer 
ceased his struggles, placed a certain number 
of the coins and scarabcei in the hand of our 
attendant, and said, " These for six pounds ; " 
and then, pausing a moment, added with a 
reproachful air, as he surrendered the rest, 
"These a present." 



SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 85 

There is one aspect of buying and selling 
in Egypt which is not without an element of 
pathos. It is a country in which everything 
is for sale. The rich are so very few, and the 
desperately poor are so many, that it rarely 
happens that you see anything that cannot be 
bought. Passing a hovel you see a woman 
"grinding at a mill," the very same mill 
which is referred to in the New Testament, 
consisting of two stones, of which the upper 
turns upon that beneath, and at which the 
woman sits wearily turning, as one may see 
represented in sculptures six thousand years 
old. Unconscious of observation she has 
dropped her veil, and her face is exposed. It 
is a face (I am describing what I happened 
to see) full of intelligence, vivacity — I had 
almost said of refinement ; and yet it is dis- 
figured by a nose-ring suspended from one 
nostril, but so balanced as' to seem to hang 
from both. On the ring, which is nearly two 
inches in diameter and of gold, are suspended 
one or two little gold balls and a few coins. 
It is probably the whole sum of her worldly 
wealth, for as you look about you you per- 
ceive that her surroundings are those of utter 
squalor and extremest poverty. Possibly it 
was her dowry, and not improbably it is an 



86 SHOPPING IN GRAND CAIRO. 

hereditary treasure, the one single ornament 
which her mother wore, and which may have 
been passed on from generation to generation 
with increasing reverence and care; but she 
will sell it — or rather she must sell it; for 
although she refuses your offer at first, her 
necessities constrain her to accept it in' the 
end, and as you felicitate yourself upon hav- 
ing secured an ornament at once curious and 
really valuable, you will be very insensible if 
your elation is not a little qualified by the 
reflection that you may have stripped another 
of the last relic of personal adornment, as 
well as the last memento of ancestral pros- 
perity. 



IX. 

The Pleasures and the Perils of the Journey — 
Nile Boats and their Crews — The Value of 
a Dragornan. 



In Eliot Warburton's "The Crescent and 
the Cross," there is an account of the boat 
in which he left Alexandria for a voyage up 
the Nile, and of the preliminary arrange- 
ments which at that time — nearly forty years 
ago — such a voyage required. 

Before the construction of the railway be- 
tween Alexandria and Cairo it was customary 
to begin the Nile voyage at the former port, 
but modern impatience has gladly seized 
upon a pretext for abridging one of the most 
delightful experiences in the world, and at 
present, the traveller who proposes to pass * 
a part or the whole of his Winter upon the 
Nile almost invariably begins his journey at 



88 THE NILE VOYAGE. 

Cairo. Within a few years the Khedive has 
completed a railway to Asyoot, which is 
about two hundred and "fifty miles above 
Cairo, on the way to the first cataract, and it 
is surprising that some enterprising personage 
has not already adopted the plan of making 
the voyage begin from this point. It would 
have at least the advantage of eliminating 
from the^ daily hearing of the voyager the 
shrieking and rumbling of the railway, which 
at present deprives, by its constant proximity, 
the first ten days of his journey southward 
of much of that charm which consists in the 
sense of isolation from all the noise and 
bustle of the busy world. 

Of course, however, it is the interest of the 
" owners of the dahabeehs which sail up the 
Nile every Winter to let them for as long a 
period as possible, and therefore Cairo is still 
the main port from which such craft take 
their departure, though a few are still taken 
at Alexandria. It is customary for the boats 
to lie at Boulak, which is simply a suburb of 
Cairo, answering the purpose of a port. 
Thither the voyager up the Nile early finds 
his way — the earlier the better; for there are 
only about fifty or sixty boats at all fit to pass 
one's Winter in, and the best of these are 



THE NILE VOYAGE. 



89 



often engaged months or even a year before- 
hand by letter from England or the United 
States. 

The minutest details of life on the Nile 
have been so often described, and as a part 
of them the curious specimen of naval archi- 
tecture known as a dahabeeh, that I shall not 
venture to rehearse what is 'doubtless already 
abundantly familiar to every one of my 
readers; but recent events have lent a melan- 
choly and tragic interest to such a voyage, 
and it may not be superfluous to say some- 
thing of those changes in the construction of 
the dahabeeh which, it is to be feared, have 
contributed to prepare the way for such 
events. When Warburton ascended the Nile 
the traveller's dahabeeh was a craft about 
thirty-five feet long, and, with a cabin, at 
most about four feet high. Since then the 
luxurious demands of modern travel have 
gradually lengthened these boats, until now 
they are built, in some instances, one hun- 
dred and twenty-five feet long, and with 
cabins eight feet in the clear. This would 
make little difference, perhaps, if the size of 
the huge lateen-sail did not go on increasing 
with the length of the boat, until now the 
task of handling and controlling such a sail 



90 THE NILE VOYAGE, 

may easily become a very serious one. In 
order to pull any craft up the Nile against 
its tremendous current the sail must be a 
large one, and when almost the entire force 
of the wind presses upon this sail at one 
single point it is quite impossible that the 
rope, or "sheet," which stays or holds the 
sail at this point, should be controlled by a 
single sailor. In the infallible Murray, and 
in the journals, published and unpublished, 
of many travellers, great stress is laid upon 
the necessity of guarding against sudden 
flaws of wind, which, when sailing in the 
neighborhood of mountains, are liable to 
strike the sail and so capsize the boat. This 
danger is supposed to be sufficiently met by 
inserting in the contract a provision that, 
when sailing, one of the crew shall always 
hold the rope or sheet which stays the main- 
sail in his own hands, so as to be able to let it 
fly, and so ease the sail at a moment's warn- 
ing; but, as a matter of fact, this is, as I have 
intimated, quite impossible. The sailor has 
to run the rope through a ring and knot it in 
order to control it at all, and this knot has to 
be undone and the rope extricated from the 
ring before the sail can be released. But it 
is easy to see that in the few seconds neces- 



THE NILE VOYAGE. 9 1 

sary for this a boat may heel over, and may 
utterly fail to recover herself. 

This undoubtedly was the explanation of 
the catastrophe which has saddened all 
voyagers upon the Nile this Winter, and 
which cost the lives of three young girls, 
who were drowned without an instant's warn- 
ing. The sympathy which has been every- 
where felt for their friends will be especially 
keen among Americans, in behalf of that 
kindly and accomplished English gentleman, 
their kinsman, Mr. Russell Gurney, whose 
temporary residence in the United States (as 
one of the Commission upon the Alabama 
Claims) has made him known and honored 
in our country as well as his own. 

It would be a pity if such an accident 
were allowed to be forgotten without at least 
an effort to direct attention to the warning 
which it utters. I do not know that Ameri- 
cans need that warning more than others, 
but I have ventured to give it. It is simply 
that it is not wise to travel in boats which 
are too large and unwieldy, and which are 
built with an undue reference to speed. 
With us it is comparatively a small matter 
whether a cabin be five feet high or twice as 
much, provided the height is gained by sink- 



92 THE NILE VOYAGE. 

ing the cabin floor below the water line; 
but on the Nile, one of the first conditions 
of a good boat is that she should not draw 
more than eighteen inches or two feet of 
water. If, therefore, the saloon and cabins 
are to have much elegance in the way of 
height, they must secure it at the cost of 
pushing the whole structure so high into the 
air as to make it, in a high wind, unwieldy 
and top-heavy. If to this is added such 
narrowness in the waist as has lately char- 
acterized many of the iron boats built in 
England and brought to the Nile, it is easy 
to see that in sailing up the river a boat may 
be in considerable danger of capsizing. 

From all this it follows that safety and 
comfort are equally secured by avoiding 
boats which are too long, too narrow, and 
too high out of water. Of course, if the 
boats are made of sufficient breadth the 
dangers or discomforts I have indicated may 
be avoided ; but the larger boats (those, I 
mean, of more than one hundred feet in 
length, with proportionate width) are so un- 
wieldy as to make it difficult to get them 
above the first cataract ; and in coming down 
the river their bulk is a hindrance to their 
drifting, so that the traveller who has allowed 



THE NILE VOYAGE. 93 

himself a pretty liberal margin of time for 
his voyage finds himself sometimes in danger 
of using it all up before he 'gets half way back 
to Cairo. 

There is a very animated competition 
among the boat-owners at Cairo, between the 
native boats and those of foreign build. The 
joiners' work of the latter, and their minor 
conveniences, are generally superior, and they 
are supposed to be cleaner ; but the native 
boats are apt to be faster, and some of them 
are very excellent. The thing of chief im- 
portance is to secure a boat which has not 
been used for freighting purposes, and which 
stands, therefore, a reasonable chance of 
being free from vermin. 

In engaging a dahabeeh the captain (or 
rei's), mate, steersman, and crew go with the 
boat, and all these are put, by the terms of 
the usual contract in such cases, under the 
absolute command of the hirer — that is to 
say, the boat is to sail when the traveller 
orders it to sail, and to stop only when he has 
indicated that it may stop. In order to make 
his authority something more than a mere 
semblance of power, the contract provides 
that the hirer may, at any point in the jour- 
ney, and for any reason that may seem to 



94 THE NILE VOYAGE. 

him good, discharge the entire crew, includ- 
ing the reis, and employ another. Such a 
provision has probably been made necessary 
by the endeavors of the captains and crews 
needlessly to delay the boat upon any friv- 
olous pretext for the sake of spinning out the 
term of their own engagements. It will be 
readily seen that this contingency might be 
avoided by engaging a boat and her crew 
for the "round trip," with an agreement to 
pay a fixed sum for the same, be it longer or 
shorter. in time ; but it has been found in prac- 
tice that this offers a temptation to captains 
and crews to " rush " a boat up and down the 
river, and' by sailing or rowing at night to 
deprive the traveller of devoting so much 
time by the way to sight-seeing, and the like, 
as he wishes. The arrangement by the day 
or month, therefore, is generally preferred, 
and the provision giving the traveller absolute 
command of the reis and crew is usually in- 
serted for his protection. 

It is questionable, however, whether it does 
not confer a greater authority than many 
travellers can safely use. If the idea is once 
lodged in the mind of the hirer that the reis 
and crew are strongly interested in prolong- 
ing his journey, every suggestion looking to 



THE NILE VOYAGE. 95 

delay will be regarded with suspicion. What, 
then, is the traveller to do ? it may be asked. 
Is he to give himself up into the hands of 
fifteen or twenty Arab and Nubian sailors, to 
be dealt with according to their cunning, or 
indolence, or caprice ? On the contrary, I 
am disposed to think he will do better to give 
himself up to the cunning of one Oriental, 
and be guided largely by his counsel, doubt- 
less not unmixed with cunning also. 

In other words, I fancy that the main 
secret of enjoying a Winter of genuine rest 
and change on the Nile is to secure a good 
dragoman, and to leave yourself largely in his 
hands. I am not unmindful in saying this 
that our countryman in those " Nile Notes of 
an Howadji," which are, perhaps, the most 
charming of all contributions to what may be 
called the literature of the Nile, has written 
that " the dragoman is of four species : the 
Maltese, or the able knave ; the Greek, or 
the cunning knave ; the Syrian, or the active 
knave ; and the Egyptian, or the stupid 
knave;" but, after all, the dragoman, like 
most other people who have to earn their 
living, is largely dependent in doing so upon 
a fair reputation for honesty and upright deal- 
ing. Undoubtedly, many people are easily 



96 TIIE NILE VOYAGE, 

deceived en the Nile, as well as elsewhere ; 
but even in Cairo it sooner or later comes to 
be understood that there are some men — 
Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and even Maltese 
— who can safely be trusted, and whose in- 
terest it is to deal fairly and candidly with 
the traveller. 

And so, before engaging one's boat it is 
wise to engage one's dragoman. Any one 
can readily ascertain before leaving home the 
names of those in good repute, or if not, then 
our own or the English consul in Cairo, the 
leading bankers there, and the manager of 
the principal inn, may all be relied upon as 
candid and judicious counsellors in such an 
emergency. 

In engaging either a dragoman or a 
dahabeeh the question of expense is one 
which must concern many persons who are 
in search of health or rest. It is undoubt- 
edly true that the charges are needlessly high, 
and that abundant comfort could be secured 
at a much less expense than is usual. As it 
is, a party of six can secure a fair boat for 
$1,375 for a period of three months, and a 
dragoman for $25 a day, for the party. This 
would make the cost of a Winter on the Nile 
$3,625 for six persons, or about $625 apiece. 



THE NILE VOYAGE, 97 

Of course, there is no allowance here for 
money given away as backsheesh, or spent in 
purchasing Manchester-made coins supposed 
to have been dug up at Thebes or Abydos. 
But then, on the other hand, it includes board 
and lodging, light, fuel, and washing, togeth- 
er with all travelling expenses on land or 
water for the whole period. And even this 
expense might be considerably lessened if the 
dragoman could understand that the ordi- 
nary traveller does not need or desire to be 
nourished upon such a scale of wanton ex- 
travagance as prevails upon many Nile boats. 
Both guide books and travellers are profuse 
in counsels as to certain necessaries which 
must be brought to Egypt from a distance, 
and equally so as to certain minor comforts 
which the Nile boats do not possess, nor the 
ordinary dragoman have any knowledge of. 
But I think, nevertheless, that it would be 
entirely safe to entrust one's self to a competent 
dragoman, and to confide in the resources of 
the shops of Cairo. It would be very curious 
if, after more than half a century of foreign 
travel up and down the Nile, much of it 
being the travel of the most exacting tourists 
in the world — I mean the English — both the 
dragoman and the Cairene shopkeeper had 



gS THE NILE VOYAGE. 

not learned the wants and tastes of the 
Frank. Even the Khedive's postal system is 
now an excellent one, and the voyager on the 
Nile may find a telegraph line all the way to 
the borders of Abyssinia, if he has the curi- 
osity and the courage to go there. I mention 
these things because it is not uncommon to 
encumber one's self with many articles brought 
from a distance, all of which can be found on 
the spot. For instance, we were bidden to 
secure an American flag in Paris ; but we 
found a voluble Frenchman in the Mooskee 
who was abundantly familiar with both the 
form and colors of the drapeau Americazn, 
and though he showed us material of one 
quality, and charged us for it, while making 
up our flags, as we subsequently discovered, 
of another and inferior quality, there is no 
certainty that we might not have had the 
same experience if we had made our pur- 
chase in the Rue de la Paix. 

The modern dahabeeh is a spacious and 
thoroughly-convenient vessel, with a main 
saloon about fifteen feet by twenty, and four 
state-rooms, two double and two single. In 
addition to these is a smaller saloon in the 
stern, which may be used as a bedroom or 
sitting room. At first view one is struck with 



THE NILE VOYAGE. 99 

the comparative crudeness and primitiveness 
of the wood-work and decorations ; but a closer 
inspection shows the boats to be, on the whole, 
admirably adapted for the comfort and con- 
venience of the passengers. 

One of the chief curiosities of these boats 
is the kitchen, which consists of a hole about 
three feet square in the forward part of the 
deck, with a mud fireplace on one side of it. 
Here the cook presides, working absolutely 
in the open air, and with only a frail wooden 
hood or shed over his fire. A more hopeless- 
looking contrivance one could not well imag- 
ine ; and it is hard to realize that any but the 
crudest and most meagre results can be pro- 
duced with so scanty and primitive conven- 
iences. And yet a friend whose establishment 
includes a kitchen thirty feet square, with a 
French range and a French artist in front of 
it, declared unhesitatingly that no such results 
■were ever produced in some of the most 
famous inns in Paris. Some such assurance 
was really needed on a first view of our 
dahabeeh kitchen. 

A further perplexity which naturally oc- 
curred in looking over our little craft was as 
to the accommodations of the crew. There 
was abundance of space for the four or five 



IO0 THE NILE VOYAGE. 

passengers, but where were the fifteen or 
twenty, men (the usual number is nearer the 
latter than the former) who comprise the 
working staff of the vessel to be stowed at 
night ? The problem was solved after a very 
short and easy fashion, when we were in- 
formed that each man, including the reis> and 
excepting one, or at most two, of the servants, 
was accustomed to lie down upon the deck 
just where he had been working or watching, 
and, rolling himself in his mat or shawl, to 
sleep soundly in the open air. Then we re- 
membered, what it is so hard to remember at 
first, that it does not rain in Egypt, and that 
the Winter range of the thermometer is rarely 
below forty-five degrees. 

One of the most unique and picturesque 
features of the dahabeeh is its deck, espe- 
cially when arranged with awnings, rugs, and 
divans. The soft, warm air of many of the 
Winter days in Egypt makes it possible for 
the voyager to pass a large part of the time 
on deck, and the deck and its belongings are 
admirably arranged for this purpose. One 
could understand, when pacing it for the first 
time, how perfect must be the repose of days 
passed in sailing thus through scenes of per- 
petual interest, amid a stillness and retirement 



THE NILE VOYAGE. IOI 

upon which nothing could intrude. Even 
the unwonted costumes and unfamiliar forms 
and customs of the dusky crew whom we 
found in possession of our dahabeeh when we 
first .visited it formed an additional charm ; 
and full of interest as Cairo has been to us, 
we find ourselves looking forward with some- 
thing of eager impatience for the day on 
which our voyage shall begin. We are told 
by persons versed in the superstitions of the 
Arabs, that whatever day that may be, it must 
not be Wednesday, which, according to Mo- 
hammedan traditions, is an unlucky day; and 
at once we- realize that our voyage is to be 
embarrassed by both Christian and Moslem 
superstition — for nobody wants to set out 
on Friday; and one who, for two or three 
months, is to be comparatively at the mercy 
of a score of impulsive Arabs, will be equally 
reluctant to disregard the fears which would 
forbid their starting on Wednesday. Indeed, 
we determined, whether disregarding our own 
superstitions or not, to be careful to respect 
theirs — a determination which was at least 
prudent, if not courageous. 



X. 

©xtptitj @tt$ixim$ + 

An American at a Double Wedding a?nong 
the Egyptian Christians . 

It is not often that one gets a chance to 
attend a Copt wedding. Indeed, I presume 
we should not have assisted at one if it had 
not been for a fortunate accident. But here, 
as before, I was indebted to the untiring 
energy of an English friend, who, having 
been constantly occupied since sunrise, pro- 
posed one evening, just at dusk, that we 
should go and see a Copt church, in which 
there was a chance of finding a sort of vesper 
service. 

It will imply, I trust, no disrespect to any 
American reader if I venture to recall the 
fact that the name " Copt " stands for the 
ancient Christian Church of Egypt, and that 
the Coptic Christians of to-day assert that 



COPTIC CUSTOMS, 103 

they are the lineal descendants of the people 
who first listened to the preaching of the 
religion of the New Testament from the lips 
of St. Mark himself. In the Coptic cathedral 
in Alexandria is shown the spot, beneath its 
altar, where the body of St. Mark is supposed 
to rest. History — at any rate, western tradi- 
tion, as persons who have been in Venice will 
remember — tells a different story, and affirms 
that the body of the Evangelist was trans- 
ported, centuries ago, to the crypt of the 
cathedral of St. Mark, in Venice, where, in a 
similar position beneath its altar, they are 
now reposing. I shall not attempt to recon- 
cile these statements, which do not either of 
them affect the undoubted fact that the Coptic 
Christians are a body of people inheriting 
certain articles of Christian belief curiously 
mixed up with both Mohammedan and Jewish 
customs. It is not surprising that this should 
be so; indeed, it was rather surprising, on 
conversing with the Copts themselves, to find 
how much that was essential to the Christian 
faith they had succeeded in preserving. 
Overlaid as they have been for so many cen- 
turies by the dominant, and not always toler- 
ant, influences of the Moslem faith, it is 
wonderful to find anything left beyond the 



104 COPTIC CUST03IS. 

mere husks of certain traditional rites. I 
mention this because, in what I may have to 
say, my readers may be tempted to forget 
that I am describing what is called in Egypt 
a Christian ceremonial. 

On arriving at the court of the Copt 
church, which, like that in Alexandria, has 
for its patron saint St. Mark, we found that 
its doors were closed, and that the services 
for the day were over. We were just about 
sending for the keys in order to view the 
building, when a friend of our dragoman en- 
tered the court or enclosure within which the 
church is hidden away at some distance from 
the street, and informed him that a Coptic 
wedding was about to take place in the 
neighborhood, and suggested that possibly 
we might like to see it. We demurred a little 
at this proposed intrusion upon the private 
festivities of a family with whose acquaintance 
we were not honored, but being assured that 
they would be gratified by the attendance of 
any friends of their friend, we allowed our- 
selves to be led away, and in a few moments 
found ourselves ascending to the third floor 
of a spacious house in which, in a rather 
small room, the wedding ceremonies were to 
take place. 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. 105 

As I have said, my companion was a clergy- 
man of the Established Church of England, 
and, with that attachment to the customs of 
his own land which is so universal a char- 
acteristic of his countrymen, he straightway 
began to inquire how it was that so impor- 
tant a service as a wedding was to be cele- 
brated in a private house. " Why are not 
your people married in church?" he demanded 
of his Coptic companion, to whom we were 
indebted for our invitation. 

" Frequently they are," was the answer. 

" But is it not always so ? " 

"No." 

" But surely it is better to be married in 
church. Do not your people think so ? " 

"Yes." 

"Why, then, in the name of all that is 
reverent, are they not always married in 
church ? " 

Whereupon it came out that to be married 
in church was a somewhat expensive process, 
as it involved the payment of several consid- 
erable fees for the opening of the church, the 
musical part of the services, lights, incense, 
etc. On hearing this my clerical companion 
expressed his extreme surprise and dissatis- 
faction, and, by way of making our hospitable 



lo6 COPTIC CUSTOMS, 

Copt companion feel as uncomfortable as 
possible, went on to say : " In the Church to 
which this gentleman (pointing to me) and I 
belong, all the services of the Church are en- 
tirely free, and any body can have the church 
opened for any service that he wishes to have 
performed, without its costing him a single 
piaster." Unfortunately, I was unable to 
confirm this statement, so far as the eccle- 
siastical customs of my own country were 
concerned, and it was hard to say which was 
the most amusing, the expression of dismay 
with which my companion found that he was 
alone in his boast, or the gleam of quiet satisfac- 
tion which flitted across the face of the Copt 
when he found that the customs of his own 
Church were no worse than those in America. 
When we entered the room in which the 
marriage ceremonies were to take place, we 
found that extensive preparations were al- 
ready making, and that there was to be a 
double wedding; two young men, brothers, 
were about to be married at the same time. 
This accounted for the number of priests 
who were present, and to these, three in all, 
we were straightway presented with much 
ceremony. " Tell them, Hassan," said my 
friend, who, I am bound to add, was a mis- 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. 107 

sionary of the " Church Missionary Society " 
of the English Church (which name, to per- 
sons who know the traditions of that Society, 
will be a sufficient guaranty of his freedom 
from what are called " extreme " views, what- 
ever they may be), " tell them that we are 
both priests of sister Churches, and that we 
are very glad to be here to-day." This point 
being reiterated and explained by our inter- 
preter, we were placed, with considerable 
formality, upon the divan on which the priests 
were seated, and an attendant approached 
to offer us refreshments. These consisted, 
first, of a sort of rose-water, served in colored 
glasses with covers richly gilded. There was 
a slight smell of oil as the cup was raised to 
one's lips, but the beverage itself was very 
pleasant to the taste, and the whole thing, 
including the salver on which the glasses 
were borne, the costume of the attendant 
who bore it, and the salutations with which 
it was tendered, consisting of the triple 
gesture toward the lips, head, and heart, 
which is so universal in the East, was ex- 
tremely fascinating. It was not less so 
when, after we had emptied our glasses, they 
were taken from us by a deacon who attended 
upon the clergy, and who, upon receiving 



108 COPTIC CUSTOMS. 

them, took the extended hand with which we 
returned them in both his own, and kissed it 
gently on both sides. My companion ob- 
served in a whisper, with dry humor, that, 
" whatever might be the heresies of the Coptic 
Church (which readers of ecclesiastical his- 
tory will readily recall in connection with 
what is known as the Eutychian schism), its 
manners were very taking." But he recalled 
the remark the next moment, when he found 
that having been refreshed with rose-water 
he was expected to join his clerical com- 
panions in a cigarette. This he declared it 
impossible to do, and for some time I found 
myself regarded with favor because I evinced 
no hostility to a little very mild tobacco. 
After tobacco came coffee, and during all 
this time we were engaged in obtaining such 
information as we could through an inter- 
preter, both concerning the approaching cere- 
mony and concerning the ecclesiastical cus- 
toms of the Copts generally. 

My companion, anxious that the Coptic 
clergy present should thoroughly appreciate 
the office of their guests, favored them with a 
short lecture on ecclesiastical history, which 
ended, however, in an unlooked-for manner. 
Said he, "Tell them, Hassan, that we have 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. 



109 



Bishops, too ; " which was duly communicated. 
Whereupon the three priests bowed their 
heads and murmured something in unison. 
" What do they say, Hassan ? " impatiently 
demanded my companion. "They say," said 
Hassan, " ' It is well; God. be praised!'" 
Whereupon my friend, eager to deepen the 
favorable impression which he concluded he 
had made, went on : " Tell them, Hassan, 
that my companion is the son of a Bishop." 
This, also, was duly translated into Arabic by 
our facile attendant ; whereupon, much to my 
friend's surprise, the countenances of the 
three priests immediately fell, and for a few 
moments wore an expression in which grave 
disapprobation was evidently struggling with 
courtesy. " What do they say to that,Hassan ? " 
again demanded my friend, with increased 
impatience; whereupon, after a long and 
somewhat animated statement from the senior 
of the priests, accompanied by many deprecat- 
ing gestures, our interpreter hesitatingly in- 
formed us that they had observed that they 
had never heard of such a thing, and that it 
was not well; on hearing which my friend, 
tardily remembering his ecclesiastical history, 
whispered, " Why, of course, I ought to have 
recollected that their Bishops, like those of 



IIO COPTIC CUST03IS. 

the Greek Church, are chosen from the mo- 
nastic orders — do not marry, and, of course, 
have no sons," upon which I mildly ventured 
to suggest that, thereafter, he might better let 
well enough alone, and forbear from any fur- 
ther efforts to impress our hosts with our 
ecclesiastical importance. 

It was during these more or less compli- 
mentary exchanges that a sort of small altar 
had been arranged in the centre of the room, 
on which stood, as its most conspicuous 
object, a folio copy of the Gospels in Coptic, 
enclosed in a solid silver case, richly decorated 
and rather dirty. This was lifted from its 
place in the centre of the table and brought 
to us for our inspection. Here my companion 
saw an opportunity of rehabilitating himself 
in the good opinion of the priests, and, taking 
the volume, or casket, he first reverently kissed 
it, and then, lifting it to his head and allowing 
it to rest there for an instant, returned it to the 
hands of the deacon. It seems that this was 
an Oriental way of testifying respect for the sa- 
cred volume, and I, awkwardly, but promptly, 
imitated it. Nothing could have been more 
opportune as a means of accomplishing what 
my friend desired. It was evident that the 
priests were greatly impressed, and a few mo- 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. Ill 

ments afterward the deacon communicated to 
our interpreter a request from the clergy that 
we would assist them in the service — an 
invitation, which, somewhat to my dismay, my 
companion promptly accepted. 

At this moment there was a noise in the 
street without, and we were informed that it 
was intended to announce the approach of 
the two bridegrooms. We went to the win- 
dows, and leaning out saw a sight not easily 
forgotten. The narrow street was crowded 
with men, women, and boys, and winding up 
the court which led to the house from which 
we looked down upon it was a procession, 
composed of a band of music preceded by 
cawasses (or policemen) and followed by the 
bridegrooms and their friends. The band 
was playing with the utmost vigor, and as it* 
was composed of several reeds which gave 
only two or three notes of an intensely shrill 
quality, and some drums which produced a 
rattling, rasping sound, the effect was simply 
deafening. Add to this the glare of the 
torches, the eager movement of gayly-dressed 
figures, and the shouts and cries of the surg- 
ing crowd of lookers-on, and the whole pro- 
duced a confusion of light and sound that 
almost made one dizzy. At this moment, I 



112 COPTIC CUSTOMS. 

lifted my eyes for an instant to the dark face 
of a building almost directly opposite me, and 
hanging from the windows of its various sto- 
ries, like bees, were groups of Mohammedan 
women, whose scorn or hatred of the faith of 
the Copt could not make them indifferent to 
that most interesting of events, a wedding. In 
their excitement or curiosity many of them had 
dropped their veils, and I was a good deal sur- 
prised at the intelligence and vivacity of their 
expressions. As a matter of fact, the Moham- 
medan women are vastly more ignorant than 
the men, and are rarely allowed to acquire any 
knowledge of even the simplest rudiments of 
learning. These women, indeed, were little 
more than children, and it was, after all, with 
more of the glee of children than anything 
higher that their faces were for the moment 
illumined. Even that gleam of enjoyment, 
however, it was pleasant to see, and I felt 
equally vexed with their master (or husband, 
as I presume he was) and with myself when I 
saw that my chance scrutiny had been observed 
by him, and had led to his angrily driving them 
into the darkness of the rear apartment. In a 
few moments they were back, however, and, 
with their veils carefully arranged, watched 
the remainder of the scene in the street. 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. 113 

This ended as soon as the two bridegrooms 
had fairly crossed the threshold. The band 
departed for the brides, and the two brothers 
were a moment afterward ushered into the 
apartment to await their coming. The young 
gentlemen were arrayed in partly European 
and partly Oriental costume, the mixed effect 
of which was neither dignified nor becoming. 
They were very affable, however, and kissed 
our hands in the most devout and filial 
fashion. Soon after their entrance the pre- 
centor or choir-leader appeared, and with 
him the youthful deacons and choir-boys who 
were to perform the musical part of the ser- 
vice. One of these young gentlemen, dis- 
covering our presence, immediately attached 
himself to me as a sort of interpreter of the 
significance of the several details of the 
service, keeping up an animated conversa- 
tion in broken but very graphic English. I 
found he had been taught English in the 
Coptic school, and that he had, apparently, 
but one ambition, and that was to improve his 
idioms and his pronunciation. A brighter boy 
I never met in my life, and if he follows out his 
intention, as communicated to me that evening, 
and studies medicine, I predict that the Copts 
in Cairo will have at least one very good doctor. 



114 COPTIC CUSTOMS. 

The deacons and choir-boys had brought 
their vestments with them, and robed with an 
amount of giggling, pushing, and whispering 
which indicated that they were very much 
like their professional brothers all over the 
world. Their vestments consisted of a sort 
of surplice (which might easily have been 
cleaner), over which they wore a stole or 
scarf, carried over the shoulders and around 
the waist, and made of striped silk, the pre- 
dominant colors being yellow and green. 
The priests' vestments were more ornate, but 
were tawdry and rusty looking, at the same 
time. In form, they resembled those worn 
by the clergy of the Roman Church. When 
the clergy and assistants were habited, the 
subdeacon lighted some candles which were 
arranged in a curious candlestick, having 
some remote resemblance to a Greek cross, 
which stood upon the table behind the silver 
case containing the Gospels. As their light 
fell on the imprisoned volume standing below 
and in front of them, I noticed, for the first 
time, that the silver case was so riveted 
together that there was, apparently, ho way 
of obtaining access to that which it enclosed ; 
and on approaching nearer and examining 
more, closely, I found there was nothing to 



COPTIC CUSTOMS. 1 15 

show that the casket had been opened for a 
generation. One could not help wondering 
whether this curious fashion of making a 
fetish of an unopened book had not a good 
deal to do with the condition of the Coptic 
Church. But it is the most hopeful of signs 
when a Church or a nation begins to recog- 
nize its own defects, and I could not but be 
moved when my little Coptic companion, sit- 
ting cross-legged at my feet while we were 
waiting for the arrival of the brides, and an- 
swering some questions about his faith and 
his people, said, as an apology for some con- 
fession which he was evidently reluctant to 
make, " But you know, sir, we are an inert 
Church." May his bright and inquisitive 
mind be a prophecy of the sacred curiosity 
erelong to awaken among his people — a 
curiosity which shall prompt them to read 
the volume which now so many of them only 
" ignorantly worship !" 

Once more our conversation was inter- 
rupted by shouts and cries from the street, 
and as we turned to the windows we saw 
from the torches naming, as well as from the 
crowd that attended them, that the brides 
were approaching. As we leaned out and 
watched them threading their way among the 



Il6 COPTIC CUST03IS. 

curious and motley assemblage which sur- 
rounded them, we observed that each of 
them was attended — protected would be a 
better word — by a stalwart companion of the 
sterner sex, who led them along by the 
shoulders very much as one would guide a 
blind child. Indeed, it was evident from 
their stature that they were little more than 
children, and on inquiry I found that neither 
of them was over thirteen years of age. They 
had not been seen by the young men who 
were to be their husbands, and they were 
veiled or draped in such a way as to make it 
utterly impossible to infer anything whatever 
as to their appearance. We were wondering, 
as they approached the door below us, how 
they had survived the walk from their own 
homes to the scene of the wedding, swathed 
as they were by huge shawls, which covered 
their heads and faces, and were tightly wrap- 
ped around their shoulders. My companion 
ventured to suggest how easily one might be 
married to the wrong bride under such cir- 
cumstances, especially when, as in this case, 
they were dressed, so far as could be seen, 
precisely alike. But in the midst of the dis- 
cussion which this suggestion raised, we were 
interrupted suddenly by a prolonged and 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 



II 7 



piercing scream, as if a locomotive under a 
full head of steam was charging up the stair- 
way, and with this premonitory signal the 
brides entered the room. 



XL 

A Marriage Ceremony Curiously Performed, 
and a Wedding Dinner Curiously Eaten. 

• My last chapter left two brides on the thresh- 
old of the apartment in which, a few minutes 
later, a double wedding was to be celebrated. 
But before the ceremony began, my vivacious 
companion, on the strength of his superior 
acquaintance with the Gustoms of the East, 
undertook to give me an explanation of the 
piercing and unearthly yell with which the 
two brides had been received. From whom 
this had proceeded we had no means of see- 
ing. The sound seemed to come from the 



Il8 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

stairway, and was prolonged for a moment 
or two after the brides entered the room in 
which we were awaiting them. Its extreme 
shrillness made it probable that we had heard 
the voices of women, and this, he assured 
me, was the case ; adding that this was the 
lamentation of the attendant virgins in view 
of the dismal fate of their companions. 
" Strange," he added, " that in a country and 
among a people taught to regard it as an 
unmixed disgrace not to be married, there 
should be this custom of howling and shriek- 
ing in order to express the grief occasioned 
by a step which every young woman is edu- 
cated from her birth religiously to aspire to 
take." Unfortunately, this remark was rob- 
bed of its point by an interpreter, who in- 
formed us that the screams which we heard, 
so far from being an attempt to give expres- 
sion to any sorrowful emotion, were cries of 
joy with which it was customary to hail a 
bride's arrival. One could not but agree with 
my companion, who insisted that if this was 
so, young women in Egypt had a very im- 
perfect conception of a joyful sound. 

When the brides entered the room they 
were guided to their places precisely as we 
had seen them when watching them on their 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 1 19 

way through the street below. There was 
not the slightest sign of recognition between 
them and their respective bridegrooms, and 
from the beginning to the end there were no 
more signs of life in either of them than if 
they had been two mummies. Indeed, H. 
suggested that as they made no responses and 
never once showed their faces, there was no 
reason w T hy the ceremony should not be gone 
through with in company with a sort of lay- 
figure, or with some one trained, like a pro- 
fessional diver, to do without breathing for a 
long time — a function which their swathed 
and muffled condition must have made it ex- 
tremely difficult for mere novices to perform. 
These speculations, however, were inter- 
rupted by the services, which, after a few 
moments, began. We had almost forgotten 
our invitation to assist in them, when we were 
recalled by the approach of two of the eccle- 
siastics, one bearing a censer and the other a 
metal box (I am ashamed to betray, by my 
use of these bald phrases, my ignorance of 
the proper terminology in these matters), from 
which we were in turn requested to take a 
pinch of incense and sprinkle it upon the 
burning coals already smoking in the censer. 
I hope I did not render myself liable to be 



120 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

proceeded against canonically by my compli- 
ance with this request, which was made with 
such bland and Oriental persuasiveness that 
it was quite impossible to resist it. It was 
immediately followed by a ceremonious " cen- 
sing " of the other priests, ourselves, the brides 
and bridegrooms, the deacons, choir-boys, 
etc., and then a fat and sleepy-looking old 
gentleman, the senior of the clergy present, 
went on in due course with the service. 

It would be tedious to rehearse it here, 
were I competent to do so, which, as it was 
performed exclusively in either Coptic or 
Arabic,. I confess I am not. What was chiefly 
noticeable about it, however, was the profound 
indifference with which everybody, including 
the persons about to be married and the clergy 
themselves, appeared to regard it. I have 
seen services that were painfully mechanical, 
but here the effect was somehow quite different. 
When people are using words of which they 
know perfectly well the meaning, but are 
using them with listlessness or indecorous 
rapidity and parrot-like monotony of repeti- 
tion, there is something that shocks one very 
deeply. But here the impression was wholly 
of another sort. I shall never forget that 
stout old priest, with his vestments so huddled 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 121 

upon him that he looked like an old woman 
crooning a ditty, of whose significance she 
had long since lost all intelligible apprehen- 
sion, and who accepted a correction from his 
choir-leader as meekly as if he had been a 
school-boy. Indeed, it was one of the curiosi- 
ties of the occasion that the priests were all 
of them so unfamiliar, apparently, with the 
service that they spelled through their various 
parts as if they had been beginners in the art 
of reading. Every now and then one of them 
would make a blunder, when the precentor 
would call out in a sharp, irritated tone, " La ! 
la ! " (no ! no !) and give him the correct 
reading in a sort of grumbling under-key that 
was inexpressibly amusing; whereupon the 
old priest would look up over his spectacles in 
a meek and rather wounded fashion, as though 
mildly resenting this humiliating correction 
before strangers, and then once more address 
himself to his task, with painstaking delibera- 
tion, following the lines with his. finger, and 
reading at a pace which threatened to prolong 
the services through the night. It only needed 
the abrupt rests to which each ecclesiastic 
treated himself in turn,to render the whole scene 
irresistibly comic. When our elderly and 
portly friend had finished his part he promptly 



122 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

dropped, Turkish fashion, to the ground, and 
sat cross-legged on the floor, while some one 
else took up the service. On one such occa- 
sion he came into sudden and unexpected 
collision with a slender and feeble-looking 
clerical brother who had taken up the service, 
and who was reading it with his back to him. 
For a moment the brother reeled and rocked 
like a tower tottering to its fall, but at length 
succeeded in recovering his centre of gravity, 
though it was a good while before we recovered 
ours. 

All this time the service was proceeding 
with as little reference to the candidates for 
matrimony as though they had not been pres- 
ent. There seemed something studied in the 
accuracy with which each officiating priest 
carefully turned his back upon them, and it 
was not until near the end of the service that 
either of the couples had any ecclesiastical 
notice whatever. I could not help thinking 
this a mistake, if the priests had any regard 
for their own feelings, for the two bridegrooms 
at least respected the obligations of decorum 
so far as to preserve a reverent silence, and 
looked occasionally as if they were somewhat 
interested in the service. Not so the other 
persons present, who whispered and chatted 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 123 

to each other, in somewhat subdued tones, it is 
true, but otherwise without the slightest re- 
serve. One of the priests evidently felt it his 
duty to make the occasion as cheerful as pos- 
sible, and, therefore, while one of his brethren 
was occupied in reading some part of the ser- 
vice, he would be imparting some pleasant jest 
to his companion, and the low ripple of laugh- 
ter would come in in the midst of the droning 
of the "officiant " like some light running ac- 
companiment to a heavy bass solo. Of course 
a great deal of this, so surprising, and in some 
aspects of it so painful, to us, was to be ex- 
plained by the fact that the service was con- 
ducted in the Coptic tongue, which a great 
many of the Copts themselves very imperfect- 
ly understand. Indeed, if these Coptic Chris- 
tians ever reflected about the fact at all, it 
must have been a humiliating thought to them 
that, whenever they would make any part of 
their services intelligible to the mass of per- 
sons who attend them, they are obliged (as 
they were on this occasion) to use an inter- 
preter, who translates the passages of the Gos- 
pels and Epistles read in the services into Ara- 
bic. On this occasion the interpreter was a 
youth with one eye, who ran this eye along 
the page in a curious fashion, and upon whom 



124 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

the old priest, to whom I have referred as oc- 
casionally blundering in his Coptic, revenged 
himself by snubbing him audibly for his blun- 
ders in Arabic. 

These things would not have been at once 
intelligible to us if it had not been for the con- 
stant assistance of our little friend, the English- 
speaking lad in the choir. This youthful Copt 
could not be induced to regard anything as of 
so much importance as the business of making 
things plain to us, and he kept up his running 
commentary in tones which he took very little 
trouble to make inaudible to the whole room. 
Leaning down once (for he sat cross-legged on 
the floor through most of the service) to hint 
to him the propriety of a more subdued key, I 
reached out my hand incautiously behind* rne 
to preserve my balance, and in doing so knock- 
ed my hat out of the window. It was of the 
most rigidly orthodox English pattern, and I 
knew it would be of no earthly use to any native 
of Cairo, unless (as Sir Arthur Helps has some- 
where suggested a savage easily might) he 
should mistake it for a cooking utensil, and 
convert it to some such use ; but it was the 
only hat I had, and I was naturally anxious to 
recover it. I ventured, therefore, to whisper 
my dilemma to my young companion, in the 



A COPTIC WEDDISG. 1 25 

hope that he could commission some one in 
the room to go downstairs and search for it ; 
but what was my dismay to see him drop his 
service-book on the floor, doff his vestments 
with most astonishing celerity, and vanish out 
of the door in search of it himself! It spoke 
well for the honesty of the somewhat promis- 
cuous crowd below that in a few moments he 
returned with it safe and sound. 

As the service drew to its close it was 
varied for the first time by some words ad- 
dressed to the two couples, and by certain 
ceremonies symbolical of the union then 
about to be consummated. One of these 
was extremely pretty and suggestive. An 
embroidered scarf of some rich texture was 
handed to the officiating clergyman, and this 
he bound round the head of the bridegroom, 
'and then, passing it directly from the crown 
of his head, repeated the process of winding 
it about the head of the bride. The effect 
was not ungraceful, and the idea which the 
whole was evidently intended to convey, of 
the two lives thenceforth united in one 
thought and interest, was very beautifully 
expressed. After this came the ceremony 
of tekreel, or crowning, which consisted in 
the placing by the priest of a kind of crown 



126 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

or frontal diadem of gold on the head of 
each person, which was worn until the con- 
clusion of the ceremony. The priest also 
received and blessed two rings in each case, 
for the bridegroom and bride, and then, after 
what appeared to be an exhortation addressed 
to the couples, the services were brought to a 
close. We were not allowed, however, to 
congratulate the brides, and the bridegrooms 
seemed a little puzzled by our western forms 
of speech in offering our salutations. Mean- 
time the brides had been led away by their 
attendants, and in a few moments the two 
bridegrooms descended to attend to the en- 
tertainment of their guests. 

By this time the evening was well ad- 
vanced, and we were about to hasten away 
in search of something to take the place of 
our lost dinner. Our interpreter, however, ' 
insisted that we should remain and dine with 
the friends of the bridegroom ; and after some 
consultation we decided to accept his invita- 
tion. It needed all our acquaintance with 
Oriental traditions of hospitality, however, 
to enable us to overcome the instinctive 
reluctance to intrude upon persons on whom 
we had not the slightest claim, and whose 
company we had sought purely from motives 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 127 

of curiosity. But we were assured that our 
host would feel wounded if we retired with- 
out tasting of his viands, and our guide and 
counsellor, Hassan, assured us that we should 
find them abundantly worth tasting. 

As usual, Hassan was right. We descended 
from the upper rooms and found ourselves in 
a large and unpaved court, around three sides 
of which ran a broad divan, on which guests 
were reclining in all sorts of costumes and 
postures. We were seated among these, and 
enjoyed for a few moments a very wholesome 
and humbling sense of the hideousness of 
our garments when compared with the rich 
and happily-blended colors of the costumes 
which surrounded us, and the easy and 
indolent grace of the persons who wore them. 
But these sleepy-looking and smiling Cairene 
gentlemen successfully concealed any scorn 
they may have felt for our mean apparel and 
gauche bearing, and made room for us beside 
them with hearty cordiality. As for a time 
our dragoman, interpreter, and the choir-boys 
all alike disappeared, we were left in a some- 
what perplexing position, for conversation 
was impossible, and the perpetual salaaming 
with which the guests about us supplied the 
place of it grew somewhat stale with repeti- 






128 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

tion. We were regaled once more with 
coffee, and also with sherbet, and then our 
interpreter entered and announced that din- 
ner was served. 

As it was served in a room about twelve 
feet square instead of a large dining-hall, it 
appeared that the guests were to be " dined " 
in instalments, and these, if our own expe- 
rience was a criterion, did not exceed in 
number ten persons. Seven sat down, with 
an interpreter and ourselves, to a table con- 
sisting of a shallow circular metal tray about 
four feet in diameter, in the centre of which 
stood a single covered dish, and around the 
circumference of which were distributed ten 
large oval-shaped pieces of bread. Two 
spoons, laid beside each of these, completed 
the equipment of the table. We seated our- 
selves with a good deal of salaaming and 
ceremony, and then each man seized a spoon 
and waited for the feast to begin. In an 
instant the lid of the mysterious dish was 
whipped off, and in another instant nine ivory 
spoons were fishing in the soup which was 
disclosed, and transferring both liquid and 
solid nourishment to hungry mouths with 
somewhat startling rapidity. I say nine 
spoons, and not ten, for at first I found my- 



A COPTIC WEDDING. 129 

self altogether unequal to the emergency ; but, 
" Help yourself, sir, else you get nothing at 
all," cried the interpreter, and obviously this 
was precisely "the situation." So in went 
one more spoon among the rest, and with the 
first plunge vanished every vestige of reserve. 
In a few moments I found myself rending a 
roast turkey with my fingers, and fishing oat 
tidbits with a fine scorn of knives, forks, and 
spoons. It required a little more effort, when 
a very affable, but not very tidy-looking, 
gentleman on my left insisted on transferring 
little splinters of meat from the dish to my 
plate (or piece of bread) with his fingers, to 
eat them with much relish; but even this 
reluctance vanished in time, and before the 
repast was over I became a good deal shaken 
in my conviction that a four-pronged fork is 
the most distinctive mark of an advanced 
civilization. 

I shall not linger upon our courses. They 
meandered through labyrinths of culinary 
mystery, which wisdom counselled us not to 
penetrate too deeply. There was a dish that 
tasted like terrapin, but then it might so eas- 
ily have been rats that we promptly recalled 
the apostolic rule, and ate, asking no ques- 
tions. As I have said, Hassan was right. So 
9 



130 A COPTIC WEDDING. 

good a dinner one does not often eat, and if 
Egypt has lost some nobler arts, she has .wise- 
ly preserved the art of cooking. Is it this that 
explains what one may see in so much Egyp- 
tian statuary, and equally in so many living 
Egyptian faces ? Was it because they were 
so wisely and wholesomely nourished that the 
disinterred images of those heroes of the time 
of Rameses II. look down so blandly and be- 
nignly upon the dyspeptic traveller of to-day ? 
One thing we were assured of, as we exchang- 
ed these queries on our way home, and that 
was, as our interpreter impressed upon us, 
that the two brides whom we had seen mar- 
ried, whatever else they might be ignorant of, 
were pretty sure to be thorough mistresses of 
culinary art. " They might have brought 
more costly dowries to their husbands," mur- 
mured my friend, in the somewhat acrimoni- 
ous tone of a man who has suffered from sour 
bread, " but surely none more likely to illumine 
the domestic hearthstone with perpetual sun- 
shine." Such earthy creatures are men ! 



XII. 

American and English Efforts to Teach Mo- 
hammedan Children — Curious Difficulties in 
the Way — Miss What e If s School. 

It would be a very pitiful thing if one went 
to the East merely to be diverted by it, and 
still more pitiful if the traveller could look 
upon that imperfect and sadly-obscured light 
which shines through the rites of the Coptic 
or the Mohammedan faith, without a hearty 
sympathy for any endeavor to make that light 
clearer and fuller. One cannot forget, of 
course, that it has been somewhat the fashion 
to smile upon all such endeavors with a bland 
and compassionate contempt. Many persons 
maintain that Christianity never has made, 
and never can make, the slightest impression 
upon Mohammedanism ; and many others be- 
lieve with equal sincerity that Coptic Chris- 



132 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

tianity is of so poor and low a type that any at- 
tempt to improve it is simply wasting strength 
in the vain endeavor to galvanize a corpse. 
Certainly one has no right to quarrel with per- 
sons whose faith in the quickening, ennobling, 
and conquering power of the religion of the 
New Testament is of so very mild and tepid a 
quality. But it is at least a matter for unfeign- 
ed rejoicing, that there are a few men and wo- 
men whose opinions are very different, and 
who have proved their faith by noble and self- 
denying work in Egypt, extending over a pe- 
riod of more than twenty years. 

It is matter of honest pride, too, that some 
of these are our own country-people, who 
have, at Alexandria, at Cairo, and at Siout, in 
middle Egypt, maintained schools and mis- 
sions with considerable success. Dr. Lansing, 
the head of the American mission in Cairo, and 
his coadjutor, Dr. Watson, together with the 
warm-hearted and hard-working men and wo- 
men who are associated with them, are mem- 
bers, I believe, of a communion which in- 
herits its ecclesiastical traditions largely from 
the rigid formularies of Scotch Presbyterian- 
ism ; and any testimony as to their work from 
a prelatist might possibly awaken in them a 
shiver of self-reproach at the too easy com- 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 133 

plaisance which had earned it. In truth, I am 
not competent to speak of their ecclesiastical 
labors, for I know little or nothing of them. 
What I did see in Cairo was their school, in 
which were gathered a large number of pupils 
of both sexes, and of both the Mohammedan 
and Coptic faiths. These pupils were receiv- 
ing a higher order of education than they 
could hope to obtain elsewhere, and were gain- 
ing, by means of it, a mental inquisitiveness 
which must, sooner or later, prove fatal to a 
great deal of Oriental superstition, whether it 
disguise itself under Coptic or Mohammedan 
forms. As J have intimated in a former chap- 
ter, the Egyptian government has not been al- 
together backward in encouraging its people 
to read and write ; but what is wanted is 
something more than this merely elementary 
teaching — instruction in history, in the exact 
sciences, and, above all, in a habit of diligent 
thinking. It will only be when this has been 
in some measure achieved that the evils of 
persistent and stupid traditions will be over- 
come, and that men will come to understand 
that the only Evil Eye is one that sees things 
falsely. When people believe that the refuse 
of a black dog is a sovereign remedy for one 
disease, and the refuse of a white cow for an- 



134 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

other, there is nothing we can do for them but 
to awaken in them that which thinks and rea- 
sons, and so set them to find out for them- 
selves the hollowness of their delusions. 

Undoubtedly this is a slow process, and one 
which will often receive its severest checks 
from the obstinacy of the people among whom 
it is attempted ; but it is no less certain that 
our American schools in Egypt have been 
making steady and healthful advancement, 
and that already they can point to large num- 
bers of men and women whose lives have been 
made purer and happier, and whose aspira- 
tions have been dignified and elevated by the 
teaching which they have received. It was 
my fortune to be in Cairo when the new door- 
step (or corner-stone) of the new American 
school-building was laid, and to witness a 
scene which has, I presume, already been de- 
scribed by other persons who were present. 
To one of them, at any rate, the most interest- 
ing feature of that unique and picturesque 
spectacle was not the assemblage of distin- 
guished Americans — though it included judges, 
diplomatists, and men of letters — not the ar- 
ray, at once brilliant and gratifying, of the 
representatives of foreign governments and in- 
terests, nor yet the imposing deputation of 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 135 

Bishops and clergy from the Greek Church, 
who " assisted " on the occasion with such be- 
nign and affable dignity, but the dusky fringe 
of eager faces, crowned with turban or tar- 
boosh, that hung upon the edge of the little 
group of Franks, at once outnumbering them 
beyond all count, and eclipsing their more lan- 
guid interest by a hungry earnestness of atten- 
tion which could not be wearied. One's scep- 
ticism needed to be of the most obstinate text- 
ure in order to persuade him that in such a 
scene there was no evidence of the awakening 
of dormant minds, and of loftier and more 
truthful perceptions. 

I have said little of the American schools 
in detail, because my opportunities for seeing 
them were slight, and because (unless I mis- 
take) an extended account of them has re- 
cently appeared in our own newspapers, in 
connection with a description of the cere- 
mony to which I have already referred. 
Another school in Cairo is doing a work 
which is of peculiar interest, and this I was 
enabled to visit repeatedly. I refer to the 
school under the charge of the daughter of 
the Archbishop of Dublin, Miss Whately, 
which has had a career of signal success. 
One ever so indifferent to the matter of the 



136 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

education of Egyptian children would have 
felt some curiosity to see the daughter of a 
man whose name is so well known in our 
own land, and whose works have a place in 
the memory, if not in the gratitude, of every 
school-boy of this generation. I -remember, 
as though it were yesterday, assisting, when a 
lad of a dozen years of age, in the unpacking 
of a case of books sent from Ireland to 
Pennsylvania by Archbishop Whately, as an 
acknowledgment of the contributions made 
by citizens of Philadelphia for the relief of 
the famine of 1848 (I am not quite sure as to 
the year) in Ireland. Along with them the 
Archbishop sent to a brother ecclesiastic a 
full-length engraving of himself, and, school- 
boy as I was, plodding at the time through 
the pages of his Grace's " Logic " and 
" Rhetoric," I can recall the curious interest 
with which I studied his portrait. It was 
with something of the sense of greeting a 
familiar face that I met, for the first time, 
under her own roof in Cairo, the daughter 
who bears his name, and it was, too, with the 
feeling that there must have been some slum- 
bering strain of enthusiastic self-sacrifice in 
that somewhat dry and unsentimental nature 
of his, which, coming to the surface in the 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 1 3 7* 

kindlier soil of a woman's heart, had prompted 
his child to go forth to the work in the midst 
of which I found her. One cannot doubt 
that it is owing not a little to that sound 
judgment and sturdy wisdom which she has 
inherited from her distinguished father that 
the success of Miss Whately is owing. That 
it is success no one who visits her school 
can doubt. 

When I saw them there were nearly two 
hundred young persons assembled in the 
various class rooms, and their whole bearing, 
as well as their prompt and intelligent an- 
swers to the questions which were put to 
them, showed a mental alertness which was 
positively refreshing. The school is graded 
according to the ages and attainments of the 
pupils, and it was not the least interesting 
and curious among the scenes in the various 
class rooms to have pointed out to us young 
girls whose hands had been repeatedly sought 
in marriage, but who had declined such over- 
tures rather than surrender the privileges of 
the school. One of these young women, 
who had reached the advanced age of fifteen, 
had been asked in marriage no less than five 
times, and five times had declined. Let it 
be remembered that an Egyptian girl has 



138 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

arrived at a marriageable age when she is 
twelve or thirteen years old, and that this 
young girl was not only departing from the 
customs of her people, but declining what 
every tradition of her race conspired to teach 
her was the crowning dignity of her sex. I 
confess I found myself wondering whether 
one could hope to find a similar thirst for 
learning among more favored peoples. 

Indeed, it is in this courage in resisting 
temptations to surrender opportunities for 
learning, and in overcoming obstacles to the 
improvement of those opportunities, that one 
finds a most hopeful sign for the future of 
the Egyptian people. Those obstacles begin 
with their birth, and multiply with every 
added year. In the case of an Egyptian 
child, one of the fundamental conditions of 
its well-being, in. the mind of its parent, is 
that it should be dirty and ill-clad. I have 
already described how neglected and poorly 
clothed will often appear the child of parents 
of comparative wealth. This is permitted 
out of deference to the widely-prevalent and 
most potent superstition of the Evil Eye. If 
you have a good horse, take care not to clean 
him or to caparison him gayly, or you will 
provoke the misfortune of the Evil Eye. 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 139 

Let his coat be rough and his trappings 
mean, and then he will pass unnoticed, or, at 
least, provoke no man's envious or covetous 
glance ; for the envious or covetous glance is 
the Evil Eye, and it is an illustration of the 
odd moral inversions of these Arabic super- 
stitions that the punishment provoked by the 
Evil Eye falls, not on the envious or covetous 
person who has indulged in these sinful 
glances, but upon the innocent victim on 
whom they fall. If your horse is stolen or 
runs away, tken it is because some one has 
cast upon him an Evil Eye. If your child 
droops and sickens, it is because his beauty, 
or his apparel, or both, have provoked the 
glances of the Evil Eye. Plainly, therefore, 
the way to avoid these calamities is to con- 
ceal the treasures which you possess. If 
your child has beauty of feature, take care 
that he shall be so begrimed with dirt that 
no one can tell him from a mud wall. If he 
have grace of person or bearing, clothe him 
in rags, and starve him by neglect, so that 
no one may notice him save to avoid him. 
An excellent system, on the Egyptian theory 
of life, but quite fatal to his chances of get- 
ting a good education in a Christian school ; 
for whatever an Egyptian parent may venture 



140 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

to do in the case of his or her own children, 
the least that any Christian man or woman 
can demand, when gathering a hundred or 
two of such children into one school, is that 
they shall have clean skins, and, at any rate, 
one decent garment. Not to insist upon this 
would be to make the school a hot-house for 
the rapid development of bad habits and of 
contagious disease. But here there straight- 
way arises collision between the parent and 
teacher. " What ! " demands the former, 
" shall I make my child a target for the 
malign influences of every Evil Eye that may 
chance to fall upon him ? Make him clean 
and dress him neatly, do you say ? But what 
is this if not a short method of dooming him 
to speedy misfortune ? " And when one 
attempts to reason with such an objection, 
he very speedily finds how much harder it is 
to conquer a superstition than to persuade 
intelligence. 

But these are merely the difficulties that lie 
at the threshold. When an Egyptian child 
has been coaxed into school, every tradition of 
his race, and every motive of parental selfish- 
ness, conspire to get him out of it as soon as 
possible. If the child be a boy, the merest ru- 
diments of learning, in a country where edu- 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 141 

cation is not the heritage of the many, but the 
distinction of the few, give him a commercial 
value which the indolence of his natural guar- 
dians is not slow to turn into money. It is 
easy to see that, under these circumstances, it 
becomes every month — almost every week — 
increasingly difficult to retain a hold upon 
children who have been laboriously gathered. 
The teacher may have gone, as Miss Whately 
was accustomed to go, from door to door, 
soliciting the privilege of teaching Arab chil- 
dren for nothing. She may have wrestled in 
argument, as Miss Whately amusingly pictures 
herself doing, with old women who did not 
feel interested enough in their visitor to open 
their doors to her, but who could hurl from a 
second-story window a string of shrill and ac- 
rimonious reasons why children should not be 
taught anything ; such a one may have slowly 
triumphed over the prejudices, the obstinacy, 
the ignorance of -stupid and wrong-headed 
teachers, and may have succeeded at length in 
winning children to her side. It is then that 
her sorest discouragements begin ; for no soon- 
er has she awakened some dormant spark of 
interest, and laid the baldest foundation of 
some worthy superstructure of education, than 
a thousand motives conspire to prohibit her 



142 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

further advances. If the child is a girl, any 
education is regarded as, at the best, but a 
i doubtful boon, and it is easy to see that un- 
der institutions which lend their sanction to 
polygamy, # there is a certain force in such a 
view. To educate women is, undoubtedly, to 
incur the risk of making them dissatisfied with 
a condition which ignorance alone can render 
endurable; for while learning may improve 
the sex as companions, it is apt to impair their 
value as toys — and it is as toys that Moham- 
medanism rates them — and it equally resents 
an interference which teaches them to read 
and to think, and an education which encour- 
ages them to believe that they have souls. 

If, in spite of such difficulties and others 
like them, a single woman has built up a 
school which is educating both boys and girls 
in sound learning and in Christian ideas, her 
work is surely worthy of all honor. That that 
work has been done without parade, and in 
the cheerful and resolute fashion which is so 
distinctive of English work and of the Eng- 
lish character, is not its least charm. Two 
things which I saw in Miss Whately's school 
will live in my memory as freshly and vividly 
as anything which I have seen in all the East. 
One of them was revealed to me when, throw- 



EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 143 

ing open a door, Miss Whately said simply, 
" This is our sewing-school." In a lofty room 
were assembled a number of young girls and 
young children, engaged in groups of twos and 
threes, in embroidery upon tambour-frames. 
Every variety of work, in every variety of 
texture, was here going on, including the em- 
broidery of silk and velvet in colors, and of 
other light and airy-looking materials, which I 
shall not attempt to designate more precisely, 
in gold and silver thread. When I remem- 
bered that it is a rare thing to find an Orient- 
al woman who understands even the simplest 
rudiments of sewing, it was a matter of genu- 
ine rejoicing that such a resource for employ- 
ing idle hours and beautifying homes was 
placed within the reach of those girls, who 
would otherwise have sat with folded hands, 
or used them only in the coarsest drudgery. 
Somebody has said that what smoking is to 
men, needlework in its various forms is to wo- 
men — a soothing employment, that quiets 
restless nerves and furnishes an outlet for 
aimless activities. At any rate, such home 
arts cannot be taught to these Mohammedan 
girls without introducing among them habits 
of self-helpfulness, and awakening equally an 
impulse to make home brighter, gayer, and 



144 EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 

more home-like, whose good effects cannot 
easily be calculated. 

The other scene was in a larger room, 
where at least a hundred younger children 
were gathered, and where two of their number, 
standing in the middle of the room, led the 
rest in repeating the Lord's Prayer. Any- 
thing so profoundly pathetic by virtue of its 
very naturalness and simplicity, it is not easy 
to conceive. Two little girls, of modest and 
devout mien, advanced from their companions, 
and standing with heads reverently bent, and 
one hand covering the else possibly wandering 
eyes, repeated in Arabic in low, clear tones, 
the simple words, " Our Father, who art in 
Heaven, hallowed be Thy name." In the 
same hushed voice the whole school repeated 
the words after them. I do not know what it 
was — the tones of their voices, the earnestness 
of their faces, the unaffected reverence of their 
whole bearing — but before they had done, the 
tears stood in my eyes, and that incomparable 
prayer had got somehow a new meaning and 
a deeper appropriateness. " Thy kingdom 
come." Who could doubt that in God's own 
time and way it would verily come to these, 
as to so many others still walking in darkness or 
in paths clouded by superstition ? And seeing 



THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS, 145 

the love for her that shone in those childlike 
faces, who could help at once honoring and 
envying the noble woman who, turning her 
back upon the refinements, the dignities, and 
the companionships of home, was doing, in 
that far-off land, so noble and Christ-like a 
work ? 



XIII. 

f^j If ifrj mtir % |>ijramft$ + 

The Conditions of a Pleasant Nile Voyage — 
First Views of Pyramids and Ruins. 

There are legends of Winters passed upon 
the Nile which record as little of peace and 
repose as we are wont to attribute to the 
Kilkenny cats. I remember one of them 
which told how two young couples, setting 
out in company for a three-months , voyage, 
quarrelled hopelessly at their first dinner, 
and never sat down to the same table for the 
remainder of the seventy days. A cynic 



I46 TRB NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 

whom I met in Cairo advised me to take a 
railway time-table with me, so that I might 
be able to abandon boat life and return to 
civilization so soori as the monotony of 
limited companionship became intolerable. 
Neither legend nor counsel was altogether 
inopportune. Congenial society is, undoubt-' 
edly, desirable where one is shut up to con- 
stant intercourse with half a dozen people 
for a whole Winter, and the gift — for it is 
scarcely a thing to be acquired — of being a 
good traveller is as desirable on the Nile as 
anywhere else. 

Thus conditioned, however, Nile life can 
scarcely be too much praised even by its 
most enthusiastic votaries. Friends in whose 
judgment I had been wont to confide pitied 
me beforehand in view of its inevitable dul- 
ness, or mildly rebuked me for desiring to 
enjoy its equally inevitable indolence. It is 
difficult to understand how there is any room 
for or risk of either. It is undoubtedly true, 
as a most observant traveller has written, 
that " no one can see anything in Egypt 
except what he takes with him the power of 
seeing ; " but the lowest order of intellect 
takes with it some power of seeing, and one 
is not twenty miles from Cairo before the eye 



THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 147 

has been challenged with sights at once so 
strange and so stimulating that one's thoughts 
by day and one's dreams by night become 
saturated with the warm coloring of Egyptian 
sunshine and Egyptian antiquities. One 
of the first excursions which is made on 
shore, if one takes the excursions on the way 
up the river (which, however, is not, perhaps, 
the best plan), is to Sakkara, by way of 
Memphis. This is made not so much to 
view the meagre remains of what was, when 
Herodotus saw it, the largest and most 
magnificent city in Egypt, but to see the 
Pyramids which are just beyond it, and 
which probably include the oldest in the 
world. 

Let us suppose now that you never saw a 
pyramid. You may have reserved those at 
Gheezeh for the last, and if, in your reading, 
you have ever stumbled upon any specula- 
tions as to the original design and motive 
of the Pyramids, you may possibly have 
turned from it as an extremely mouldy and 
uninteresting topic; but as your donkey, 
making his last turn, clears the shadowing 
palms, and brings you out upon the desert, 
you are confronted with something concern- 
ing which, as it rises there before your eyes, 



148 THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 

it is just as impossible not to be curious as 
it is not to breathe. That huge and tower- 
ing mass of stone, whose very simplicity of 
outline and utter absence of ornament lends 
to it a majestic grandeur and dignity which 
are all its own — who reared it there ? What 
does it mean ? How was it builded ? What 
did it hide ? And whether or not you have 
an answer ready for these questions, this at 
least you know, that those mighty monuments 
have not been reared in vain. If they were 
meant to perpetuate the memory of a great 
people, verily they have done it. The race 
which could plan such structures and then 
rear them — the kings who could make their 
tombs so stable that already they have out- 
lasted fifty centuries, and look down to-day 
upon the ruins of mightiest empires mingling 
their dust at their feet — such kings, wicked, 
cruel, remorseless though they may have 
been, were men and not children, rulers and 
not puppets. And yet all this is not the 
mere superlative of a heated imagination ; it 
is the simple truth. If we can be certified of 
any fact on earth, then we may be sure of this 
— that it is more than five thousand years 
since the supervising architect of the Great 
Pyramid of Gheezeh walked into the throne- 



THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 149 

room of Cheops and said, " Sire, your tomb 
is finished." You remember that the Pyra- 
mids of Sakkara are even older than this, 
and while you are trying to grasp this fact, 
your guide beckons you down into one of 
the splendid tombs which lie at the foot of 
these Pyramids, and you find yourself sur- 
rounded by a wealth of color and a profusion 
of adornment which scores of centuries have 
not been able to dim or efface. " Who were 
the people that did these things ? " you ask 
yourself, and at once piqued and stimulated 
by your own ignorance of them, you ride 
slowly back to your dahabeeh again, busy with 
a hundred questions to which a month before 
you never conceived it possible you could 
take the trouble to seek for an answer. 

Thus you find the use of a certain part of 
your equipment, which you have hitherto been 
tempted to designate as superfluous luggage. 
You were told to bring Wilkinson's " Ancient 
Egyptians," and Lane's "Modern Egyptians," 
and Piozzi Smyth on the Pyramids, and Sir 
John Mandeville's Travels, and a number 
of other heavy-looking volumes, which you 
bought as a tribute to decorum, and encum- 
bered yourself with as furniture which was 
to perform a purely ornamental function ; but 



150 THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 

suddenly you find that the mustiest of these 
volumes has become interesting if it can tell 
you anything about that elder Egypt, and 
that even the Bible has an altogether profane 
attraction as a record of the doings of the 
Pharaohs; for the Pharaohs, you find, in- 
cluded .Cheops and Horus and Sethos, who 
was that particular Pharaoh who once so 
affably patronized Joseph, and who found his 
account in the shrewd Israelite's character- 
istic utilization of a " short " wheat market. 
"What kind of men," you find yourself ask- 
ing, " were these who reared such monu- 
ments and builded themselves such mighty 
tombs ? " And though you may call, and 
rightly enough, building monuments to one's 
self, and piling stones upon each other for 
months and years together, simply to make a 
burial-place for one's carcass, a very narrow 
and selfish idea of immortality, yet the 
almost sublime grandeur of these tombs will 
not let you look upon them unmoved. 

It is in this way that one's ignorance and 
one's curiosity conspire to drive him to study 
books, stones, hieroglyphics, anything that 
will tell him about this wonderful Egyptian 
past ; for it is quite impossible to learn any- 
thing of them in any second-hand way. In 



THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 151 

younger countries, and amid later antiquities, 
as in England and on the Continent, you will 
find that dreary being who, whether he calls 
himself a sexton or a cicerone, a valet de 
place or a guide, is the one human being 
who, of all others, makes travel the most 
utter weariness, and the study of the past the 
most dismal mockery. Who shall tell what 
moments of rapt delight in some grand old 
cathedral, as at Ely or Cologne, have been 
spoiled, nay, made a scourge to one's 
patience, and a blister to his temper, by the 
whining, droning, mercenary creature who 
insists upon " showing " you the building ! 
There is no such plague in Egypt, land of 
the plagues though it is. At the foot of the 
Pyramids, and amid the ruins of Karnak, you 
will be equally untroubled by a cicerone. 
True, there are barefooted Arabs who call 
themselves guides ; but they usually know 
about half a dozen proper names, and make 
up for the rest with expressive but somewhat 
limited pantomime. And so you are turned 
back upon yourself and your books. You 
may appeal to your dragoman, but your 
dragoman, though he has been travelling up 
and down the Nile and piloting the stranger 
among its ruins for half a lifetime, has only 



152 THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 

learned enough to smile when you ask him a 
question, and say, " That must be the tomb 
of Rameses — no ? " a form of response that 
intimates his supreme anxiety to please you 
by calling it anything that you may prefer — 
which, according to his understanding, is the 
one function of a dragoman. 

In a word, you are in a land where you 
must be your own guide. You cannot go 
on, day after day, traversing the ruins of the 
most magnificent cities and temples that the 
sun has shone upon, without knowing some- 
thing, however little, about them. You see 
tombs, obelisks, palace walls, covered with the 
most expressive as well as the most venerable 
writing which human wit has ever invented. 
You cannot consent to be such a dolt as to 
continue staring at them, day after day, with- 
out the faintest glimmering of what may be 
the meaning of at least one single cartouch. 

Here one finds his occupation for the days 
of his dahabeeh life, which, while it does not 
deserve the dignity of the name of study* has 
at least the charm of diversion. Then, too, 
on days when there are no excursions — no 
pyramids to visit, nor temples to explore, nor 
tombs to descend into — there is the Nile it- 
self, with its endless stream of life and its 



THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 153 

ever-changeful banks. As I write these lines, 
the wind has suddenly changed, and my cabin 
windows look down on a broad river, up 
which there comes charging a fleet of at least 
a hundred sail. They are merely the shabby 
cargo boats of the natives, on which often 
one sees only a single head, doubtless some- 
how attached by arm or leg to the helm, but 
hidden out of sight as the little hulk scuds 
by, and yet, as they advance with their huge 
lateen-sails crossing each other like the taper- 
ing wings of a bird, they form a picture, 
framed by the ragged edges of the Mokotam 
hills, and fringed with a broadening belt of 
palms, which makes one wonder why Egypt is 
not the ideal home of the painter. 

Then, too there is the perpetual variety of 
the very water's edge. When away from 
Egypt you read how every living thing in the 
land must come to the brink of the Nile to 
drink, and you think of the assertion as the 
exaggeration of the traveller, or else — which 
is much more probable — you do not think of 
it at all; but here you see the thing itself, 
day by day, and all day long, repeated before 
your eyes. The solitary buffalo cow, the 
flocks of sheep, the ibis, or the beautiful bird 
which stands as its modern representative, 



IS 4 THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS. 

the troops of girls with their water-jars upon 
their heads — all these go to form a combination 
with varieties as endless as a kaleidoscope, and 
with colors at once infinitely warmer and more 
varied. It is undoubtedly possible to be dull 
on the Nile, but then, it must be when one 
has bandaged his eyes and stopped his ears. 
To any body whose senses are not hopelessly 
asleep, it is at once a perpetual entertainment 
and an ever-fresh surprise. 

Undoubtedly it has its drawbacks. You 
have no daily despatches, and you cannot 
follow the fluctuations of the stock market ; 
but it consoles you to reflect that you are sail- 
ing up a river whose people managed to rear 
an empire without these things, and whose shat- 
tered and fallen monuments to-day, though 
scores of centuries have spoiled and hacked 
and disfigured them, make the loftiest and 
grandest structures of modern times seem 
poor and tame and contemptible. 



XIV. 

®«r §Hi* to ^g#i 

77z^ Smoke of a Factory and its Suggestions 
— Machinery, Taxation, Ru7?t, and Ruin 
Imported from Christian Lands — England's 
Opportunity, 

About one hundred and seventy-five miles 
above Cairo, on the Nile, is one of the huge 
sugar factories of the Khedive. The Khe- 
dive, I believe, owns every such establish- 
ment in Egypt, and each one of them breaks 
upon the vision of the traveller as he ascends 
the river with a fresh sense of incongruity. 
One. recognizes it afar off by its smoke, and 
smoke is a phenomenon in Egypt. In a 
country where there is almost no wood, no 
need of artificial heat for one's comfort, and 
no consumption of fuel save for cooking, it 
must be so ; for very little cooking is done, 



156 OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 

and if the pot is made to boil at all, it is 
usually by the combustion of corn-stalks. 

When, therefore, one sees the horizon 
streaked not with sunshine but with smut, it 
is with a feeling that the sanctity of the 
landscape has been somehow violated. This 
feeling does not diminish when one discovers 
that the smoke comes belching forth from a 
hideous upstart smoke-stack, which thrusts 
its ugly bulk straight up into the air for some 
scores of feet, while clustering at its feet are 
the bald and common-place buildings which 
comprise the rest of the "works." 

This civilized impertinence, disfiguring the 
bank of the Nile, and obstructing the view of 
the desert, suggested, nevertheless, several 
questions, which could only be answered by 
visiting it. I found it quite open to inspec- 
tion, and before I had left it discovered some 
one who was both able and willing to answer 
questions about the enterprise, if I had been 
disposed to ask them ; but by that time, my 
questions had been answered through my 
eyes. Here was a collection of somewhat hr- 
tricate and costly machinery, ordinarily en- 
trusted among us to the care of skilled work- 
men, and demanding constant watchfulness 
and considerable intelligence in its use. It 



OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 157 

required but a glance at the buildings to see 
that they had been reared by other than 
an Egyptian architect, and equally at the 
machinery within them to see that it, too, was 
of foreign contrivance and construction. In- 
deed, the apparatus I found was French, and 
the mind that superintended it was that of a 
Frenchman. Until lately, however, the super- 
intendent of the works has been an English- 
man. But the men and boys, the skilled 
and unskilled " hands " alike, were Arabs, 
who seemed to be abundantly equal to their 
work, and who managed the machinery with 
quickness and precision. The religion of 
Egypt precludes the employment of some of 
the processes which obtain in sugar works 
elsewhere, and refining— at any rate in the 
works at Rhoda — is not carried to so high a 
point as with us. But so far as it went the 
work was apparently well done, and with 
every regard to economy and thoroughness. 
The one thing about the whole that was 
most impressive was the curious change which 
seemed to have been wrought by this contact 
with the mechanical ingenuity of the West in 
the temperament and bearing of the Arab. 
The modern native of Egypt is one of the 
most cheerful people in the world. Especially 



158 OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 

is this true of children, who greet one with 
a smile as instinctively as if it was their only 
language. This is an experience which meets 
one with a perpetual sense of surprise, and 
steel your heart as you may against the ever- 
lasting cry for backsheesh, you yield again and 
again to the witchery of a smile which is at 
once so beseeching and so sunny that it 
would melt the resolution of a stoic. No 
matter where you are — wandering along the 
river's bank, or careering through the narrow 
streets of some dilapidated town on a donkey 
— you cannot come upon a child so suddenly 
that it will not smile at you. And when one 
gets far enough south to approach the bor- 
ders of Nubia, the natives will swarm about 
the traveller with a simple confidence, dashed 
usually with a certain laughing playfulness, 
which is singularly engaging. 

In the sugar factory at Rhoda all the mirth- 
fulness was somehow extinguished. There 
was plenty of " sweetness," but very little 
" light " — at least in the faces of the men 
and boys whose business it was to keep the 
sweetness simmering. We met scores of 
men and hundreds of boys, but I never 
caught a smile upon the face of any one of 
them. I do not know that their work was 



OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 



159 



harder than is usual with persons engaged in 
such industries, and there was no evidence of 
cruelty or hardship in the manner in which 
the daily task was enacted. Both men and 
boys received, I understood, regular wages, 
and though they were small enough, accord- 
ing to our ideas of the value of labor, they 
undoubtedly represented more money than 
the persons who drew them had ever handled 
before. 

The dull and listless air which we remarked 
was occasioned, as I could not but fancy, by 
a loss which wages were powerless to repair. 
It was the loss of freedom and of the old 
nomadic life. The modern Egyptian calls 
the wandering Arab a Bedouee, but there is 
a spice of the nomad in every Arab, how- 
soever he may live. One sees it in the 
deserted villages, and sees the ulterior reason 
for it in the ever-changing banks of the Nile, 
which from time to time compel the abandon- 
ment of the villages, and make a wandering 
life a sort of necessity to the sustaining of 
any life at all. But along with this roving 
life there goes a strong taste for being in the 
"open." The Arab loves the sunshine and 
the canopy of the blue sky, and provided he 
can have these he is happier than he would 



160 OVR GIFTS TO EGYPT 

be if he were in* a palace. Indeed, this pas- 
sion is carried so far as to upset all our west- 
ern theories of hygiene. An Arab loves to 
lie at full length in the sun ; but if he cannot 
do that, he will put his head where the sun 
can, at any rate, beat unobstructedly upon it. 
Instead of keeping his head cool and his feet 
warm, he goes barefooted in all weathers, and, 
as I saw in riding through the streets of 
Siout, will hang with his bare head out of the 
doorway in the blazing sun, while his bare 
feet are stretched on the damp stones in the 
shade, and be intensely happy in the experi- 
ence. 

The men and boys who work in the Khe- 
dive's sugar factories get but little liberty and 
less sunshine, and hence (is it an inevitable 
consequence ?), while they are not bright and 
cheery, like the lowliest of the felaheen in the 
fields, they are too often vicious and sadly in- 
temperate. As we strolled through the en- 
virons of these factories of the Khedive, one 
of the party remarked how much they wore 
the air of similar neighborhoods at home. 
It did not occur to us to observe why this was 
so until some one had counted five " corner 
groceries " in which the means of drunken- 
ness were cheaply obtained. At another 



OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. l6l 

town on the river some of us had witnessed 
a scene which presented Mohammedanism in 
its best light. The governor had come on 
board a traveller's dahabeeh to pay his respects 
to the Howadji, and according to the some- 
what doubtful usage of such occasions, was 
offered wine, which, being a Copt and not a 
Moslem, he drank without hesitation. In 
attendance upon him was a youth who stood 
just within the doorway during the interview. 
At a sign from the host wine was offered to 
him also, and it would have cheered Mr. 
Gough's heart to see the look and hear the 
cry of shocked and almost indignant recoil 
with which he refused it. Alas, that his 
countrymen have so many of them forgotten 
the lesson that their prophet taught them ! 
The Greek merchants who swarm on the 
Nile have blistered its banks with spirit 
shops, and arakee and maraschino are the 
favorite, beverages of the men who live in the 
larger towns or are employed in the public 
works. 

So we found ourselves wondering, Do rum 
and machinery inevitably go together? As 
we strolled out of the sugar-works we found 
ourselves in the neighborhood of a deserted 
Summer palace of the Khedives, and were 



1 62 OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 

invited to visit the adjacent gardens. The 
roses were in bloom, and the oranges hung 
in rich clusters upon the trees ; but the blos- 
soms were nipped by the raw norther that 
had been blowing for a week, and the black- 
ened leaves of the shoots and buds showed 
that those northerly breezes had brought a 
blighting frost along with them. It was a 
dismal type of what the man of the North 
and the West, with his cold and grasping 
ways, has done for sunny but down-trodden 
Egypt. We have given her machinery to en- 
rich her rulers and to pinch and impoverish 
her people. For all the feet that have 
traversed her shores, and for all the com- 
mercial enterprise that has explored her won- 
derful river, she is to-day no better, but rather 
worse. Since the steam-boats began ascend- 
ing the Nile, the crocodile has largely dis- 
appeared from its banks ; but other creatures, 
with as capacious a maw and as cruel a 
purpose, have taken his place. And to-day, 
though a great nation has undertaken to 
resuscitate her finances, it would seem to be 
purely in the interest of foreign bond-holders. 
" Is there anything in Egypt/' wrote out an 
English inquirer to a resident in Cairo, " is 
there anything in Egypt which will bear a 



OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 163 

tax that is not already taxed ? " The answer 
was so coarse that I may not repeat it here ; 
but when, in order to satisfy royal extrava- 
gance at home and bond-holding creditors 
abroad, every infant is taxed to an amount 
equal to one third of a soldier's wages for a 
month the instant that infant is born, and 
when, to discourage the crime of infanticide, 
which such a system of taxation inevitably 
provoked, every infant that dies, no matter 
how soon after its birth, is taxed through its 
parents to an amount equal to half a month's 
wages of an ordinary soldier, the dreadful 
and desperate wickedness of the situation 
may be appreciated. Of course, the evil is 
only driven a little further back, and crimes 
which are nameless prevail to an extent which 
it is appalling to contemplate. 

All this seems far enough off from the 
sugar factory of Rhoda. But in truth the 
two lie close together. The Christian nations 
of the North and the West must furnish . 
Egypt, if they would save it from something 
more utter and remediless than financial ruin, 
with other capital than machinery or military 
training or money. Its prince and its pashas 
want a wholesome substratum of sound moral 
ideas. And until these are imported, all 



164 OUR GIFTS TO EGYPT. 

other importations are only hastening the day 
of a very bitter reckoning. England's oppor- 
tunity is a very grand one ! Heaven send that 
she may have the wisdom and the magnanim- 
ity to improve it ! 




Hgfs tn 




i. 



M% xrfj jlijm* 



Port-Said and its People — A Mixture of Races 
and Religions — Under the Flag of Russia— 
A Landing at Joppa. 



Winter it certainly was not, as we passed 
up the moonlit streets of Port-Said in search 
of a resting-place in which to spend our last 
Sunday in Egypt. The air was as soft and 
as still as June, and the hushed plashing of 
the fountain in the neighboring square broke 
the stillness of the midnight hour amid 
flowers blooming as in mid-Summer. Even 
three months of such experiences had not 



1 66 THE GATE OF SYRIA. 

familiarized us to their incongruity with all 
the associations of our American almanac, 
and we went to our beds with a sigh, as we 
thought how soon the harshness of a Syrian 
February would obliterate these sunny mem- 
ories. 

The next day was Sunday, but the only 
outward and visible signs of it were an un- 
wonted display of consular bunting, and the 
discordant banging of the band in the neigh- 
boring square. We inquired of a voluble 
personage, who announced himself as " Guide 
and Dragoman for Port-Said, reverend sir," if 
there was any Church of England service; 
but he had never heard of any, and could 
only offer us such scanty consolation as was 
to be found in the fact that, to use his own 
language, he had until recently " officiated 
himself in connection with the English chap- 
lain at Alexandria. ,, We found that his 
" officiating " consisted in having been verger 
for a short time at the English church, and 
that his only Orders were the orders from the 
chaplain to collect the pew-rents. Still, there 
seemed something eminently decorous and 
suitable in being shown about Port-Said by 
an ex-sexton, and there was a certain unct- 
uous formality in the way in which he called 



THE GATE OF SYRIA, 167 

our attention to the more disreputable feat- 
ures of that very disreputable town, which 
somehow threw a veil of semi-ecclesiastical 
propriety over its dirtiest aspects. 

For some of its aspects were hopelessly 
dirty, and equally without the air of Oriental- 
ism, which elsewhere in Egypt almost recon- 
ciles one to dirt and — worse. Port-Said is 
offensively new, and it has not the advantage 
of being in any real sense an Eastern town. 
Created by the Suez Canal, it is simply a 
huge bar-room, where the ships of all nations 
stop and buy that particular form of ardent 
spirits which can be the most easily adultera- 
ted, and accomplish the most pernicious 
effects. Greeks, Italians, Russians, Arabs, 
Jews, Englishmen, Egyptians, and French- 
men, jostle each other in its streets, and a 
worse-looking set of representatives these 
various races and nations could hardly have. 
We read service in our room in the hotel on 
Sunday morning, looked in for a few moments 
at the rather tawdy but almost affectingly 
devout service in the Greek church in the 
afternoon (where a Nubian slave-girl, with a 
white child in her arms, recalled the days 
when Cyril ruled in Alexandria, and when 
all Northern Africa was as unanimously Chris- 



l6S Tll£ GATE OF SYE1A. 

tian as to-day it unanimously is not), and the 
next day shook the last grain of Egyptian 
dust from our feet, and took ship for Joppa, 
without a lingering sentiment of regret. 

Our ship was Russian, with a crew whose 
boots scented the decks with a fragrance 
which recalled the Astor Library, and made' 
one look about for concealed editions de 
luxe of Ruskin or the Aldine poets. Bat we 
discovered that the Russia leather bindings 
were on the sailors' legs, and that of any 
other literature than a restaurant-tariff the 
vessel was quite innocent. Its library was its 
living cargo, and a more curious and motley 
collection it would be hard to assemble. Be- 
tween decks were stowed some hundreds of 
people, who were, most of them, pilgrims on 
their return from Mecca. It lessened a little 
the respect with which one had learned to 
look upon the pilgrim of whatever species, to 
perceive that these were most of them sur- 
rounded by comforts which, while they did 
not affect their dirtiness, must have contrib- 
uted to make their journey one of greatly 
lightened hardship. As they lay about the 
decks upon soft, handsome rugs, sipping their 
coffee, and rolling their cigarettes, or smoking 
hubble-bubble pipes, they seemed as little 



THE GATE OF SYRIA. 169 

like palmers as any of their fellow-passengers. 
But if one's respect was somewhat lessened 
on witnessing the facility with which they 
softened the hardships of their self-imposed 
vocation, it rose again as sunset approached, 
and they set about the performance of their 
evening devotions. There was an utter ab- 
sence of ostentation in the way in which each 
Moslem spread his bit of carpet, and, turn- 
ing his face eastward, murmured his prayer 
to Allah. And, most noticeable of all, by 
virtue of its contrast with what is to be ob- 
served among ourselves, this open reverence 
did not fail in those who were of a rank 
superior to that of the pilgrims. Among the 
first cabin passengers there was only one 
Mohammedan, a middle-aged man, in a some- 
what severe Syrian costume. Alone he paced 
the deck for an hour before the sun vanished 
beneath the horizon, and then putting off his 
shoes where he stood, and with eyes bent 
toward Mecca, he knelt with his forehead 
bowed upon the deck, and " prayed as he did 
aforetime." The gay throng upon the deck 
passed and repassed him with jest and sneer; 
laughter which he must have been dull in- 
deed had he not discerned that he himself 
had provoked, rang in his ears ; but his face 



170 THE GATE OF SYRIA. 

was, through all, as unmoved as if he had 
been both deaf and blind. One could not 
but wish that our modern Christianity, so 
shamedfaced even in its most scant exhibi- 
tions of reverence, could learn something of 
the fearless openness which everywhere dis- 
tinguishes the Oriental. 

Perhaps it was the contrast with this sunset 
scene which made the scene below, a little 
later, so much less welcome. In the cabin, 
as well as in the forecastle, was an assemblage 
of pilgrims not Moslem but Christian. It is 
not usual to go to Jerusalem before March, 
but there were some of our country-people on 
board who were bound thither, and who be- 
guiled the last night before touching the con- 
secrated soil of the Holy Land by an animat- 
ed and prolonged discussion as to the latest 
fluctuations in stocks, and the probable risks 
of contingent investments. And yet they 
were going to Jerusalem with no other motive, 
so far as one could learn, than a reverent curi- 
osity to see the most hallowed spot on earth ! 

Falling asleep amid some such speculations, 
I was awakened the next morning by the soft, 
almost beseeching voice of my dragoman, 
who, Moslem though he was, evidently 
thought no more charitably of my own rever- 



THE GATE OF SYRIA. 171 

ence for Palestine than I had done of my 
neighbors'. " It is after six, sir," he reproach- 
fully remonstrated, " and all the Christian 
gentlemen are on deck. Jaffa is in sight." 
In one sense his words were only partially 
true. As I climbed the deck a little later, a 
blaze of sunshine flashed a broad path across 
the sea, and hid everything in its dazzling 
splendor. On either hand the eye caught a 
scanty fringe of buildings, but Jaffa itself — the 
Joppa of the New Testament — was eclipsed by 
the sun, which was just rising behind it. It 
did not matter, however. It was all holy 
ground, and as my glass ranged the coast, the 
snows of Carmel gleamed at the far left, and 
the hills of Judea lay in violet beauty to the 
right. Why profane the emotions of such a 
moment by attempting to reproduce them ! 
It was in vain that one tried to remember 
Peter and Cornelius and Dorcas, and all the 
godly men and women whose names have been 
associated with Joppa. That distant landscape 
stood not so much for Joppa as for the land 
of the Son of Mary, who was the Son of God. 
And remembering Whose eyes had once over- 
looked those same hills and slopes, all other 
thoughts were hushed, all other names for- 
gotten. 



II. 

Getting on Shore — Turks and Yankees — A 
Convent and an Orangery — Western Incre- 
dulity — The Start — A Hallowed Jlighzvay, 

To land at Jaffa is one of the feats of mod- 
ern seamanship. It is true that tradition 
makes it the building-place of the Ark, but if 
it was, one can almost sympathize with the 
scepticism which sneered at Noah's apparent- 
ly quixotic undertaking. Launched at Jaffa 
the Ark could never have been, save by the 
deluge which lifted it off the stocks ; suppos- 
ing, that is to say, that the coast-line in those 
days was such as it is to-day. A ragged reef 
.of rocks fences in the town with a deadly wall 
of granite, and it was through a narrow gap in 
this, scarcely twenty feet wide, that the little 
felucca, which brought us from ship to shore, 
felt her way into the quieter waters beyond. 



JAFFA. 173 

Fortunately the sea was calm, and the sun was 
scarce two hours high, when we found our- 
selves standing upon Syrian soil. 

What a contrast to all the traditions of that 
soil in the babel of tongues which welcomed 
us ! Seaport though it has been, for so many 
changing centuries, it seems to have been re- 
served for Turkish rule to make Joppa the 
most perplexing olla podrida of eastern and 
western nationalities. Every people whose 
soil borders on the Mediterranean, from 
Spain to the Bosphorus, jostles you in the 
narrow streets, and as you emerge from them, 
you see a suburban group of buildings, so un- 
mistakably "Yankee " in their white clapboard 
investiture, and with their smart green blinds, 
that you remember suddenly that Jaffa is also 
the scene of that rather dismal experiment 
known as the "American Colony.'-' American 
it no longer is, though a few of the original 
settlers still linger amid the scenes of their 
dissensions and their disappointments. But 
what even American smartness could not do, 
on this unfriendly shore, German thrift is ac- 
complishing with less ostentation, and with 
surer promise of success. A lad acted as our 
guide to the gardens of the Franciscan Con- 
vent, who called himself American born, but 



174 JAFFA. 

his Arabic was far more fluent than his Eng- 
lish speech ; and in his jacket and trousers he 
looked like a waif, eastern in speech and 
manner, and western only in his raiment. 

He served us well and faithfully, however, 
and led us to a scene which literally beggars 
description. The garden of the Franciscan 
Convent was not far from our little inn, and 
the way thither lay through a narrow lane, 
with a gigantic hedge of cactus on either hand. 
Such a natural fence we had not seen before, 
but a better one it would be impossible to de- 
vise. Growing with a wanton luxuriance, and 
to a height of some twelve or fifteen feet, it 
offered a screen for the garden treasures hid- 
den behind it, which the most daring depre- 
dator would be slow to assail. Once entan- 
gled and impaled amid its thorny points, es- 
cape would be hopeless. We followed its 
windings a little way, till we found our prog- 
ress barred by a weather-stained and thor- 
oughly monastic-looking gate, which was open- 
ed, on knocking, by an Arab laborer, who 
scanned us warily, and then admitted us. The 
enclosure, which is called a garden, is rather 
a huge orangery, varied with lemon and other 
fruit-trees, and edged, as we found on pene- 
trating its labyrinths, with almond-trees in all 



JAFFA. 175 

the virgin beauty of perfect flower. We had 
gone but a little way when we were met by the 
ecclesiastic who presides over the Convent, 
and who accompanied us through the grounds. 
There was a trace of the friar in the cord 
' which was knotted about his waist, and in the 
beads which hung at his side. But save for 
these, he had the aspect of a hale old farmer 
— as indeed he was. Full-bearded as a back- 
woodsman, with broad shoulders and vigorous 
stride, his whole air, as he moved about among 
his beloved orange-trees, smacked of anything 
rather than the cloister. And his pride in 
these fruits of his toil was certainly pardona- 
ble. I had seen orange groves in many a town 
on the banks of the Nile, and had threaded 
my way among the gardens of the Viceroy, 
both at Cairo and at Siout in upper Egypt, but 
the best of them was little better than a desert, 
compared with these acres of glistening verd- 
ure, and fragrant blossoms, and masses of 
golden fruit. Such a scene cannot be describ- 
ed, without language of seeming exaggeration ; 
but I may mention that I measured one of the 
oranges which the padre kindly plucked for 
us, and that its circumference was somewhat 
over eighteen inches. Indeed, the fruit of 
these gardens has long been widely famous, 



176 JAFFA. 

and it is believed that they are watered by 
subterranean streams, which at once fill the 
huge wells which the monks have dug, and 
enrich the fertile soil above them. Be this as 
it may, we could understand the healthy con- 
tentment of the old friar, and our only wonder 
was that a brotherhood with so goodly a heri- 
tage did not include a larger number. But 
one other monk, the old man told us, made up 
the whole household. He himself had spent 
there a long life, and as one noted the grace- 
ful facility with which he used his native Ital- 
ian tongue, and the courtly gentleness which 
marked his bearing, one could not but specu- 
late as to the history which explained his 
monkish habit and his life -long exile. 

It is perhaps a discreditable admission to 
make, but I must needs own that, during our 
stay in Jaffa, we did not visit the house of 
Simon the Tanner, the scene of Peter's vision, 
nor the residence of Tabitha, the Dorcas of 
the early Church. If only we could have 
forgotten Joppa's checkered history ; if only 
we could somehow have eliminated from our 
recollection the stubborn facts of Roman and 
Norman and Turkish conquests ; if only we 
could, by any subtlety of logic, have reasoned 
ourselves out of the unwelcome certainty that 



JAFFA. 177 

Vespasian and Godfrey de Bouillon and Sa- 
ladin and Sultan had, each in his turn, 
dispersed and pulverized every meanest habi- 
tation in the town, we might have found 
motive enough to go and look at something 
which, by some remotest possibility, was stand- 
ing when Peter, looking westward toward the 
Gentile world, saw the vision which taught 
his stubborn Israelitish prejudices so new and 
large a lesson. But no ; when a pilgrim of 
comparatively modern times, Bertrand de la 
Broquiere, who visited Jaffa in the fifteenth 
century, has recorded that he found the city 
so utterly razed that no solitary wall or roof 
was left, and that his only shelter from the 
burning sun was a rude reed hut, even the 
most sanguine credulity must yield. Yet I 
think we felt a little bit ashamed when, meet- 
ing some of our fellow-voyagers at the break- 
fast-table of the inn, we found that we were 
alone in our apathetic incredulity, and that 
one of them had even lingered long enough to 
make a careful and graphic sketch, under 
which was written, " The House of Simon the 
Tanner ! " And yet this is called the age of 
scepticism ! 

It is at Jaffa that one realizes that he has 
fairly left behind him the ordinary convenien- 



178 JAFFA. 

ces of civilization. Between Jaffa and Jeru- 
salem the Sultan, provoked, it is said, by a 
taunt from the late Emperor of the French, 
has constructed a road over which it is pos- 
sible for a wheeled carriage to pass ; but his 
sympathy for the 'modern pilgrim, or his 
courtesy to Eugenie, for whose convenience, 
it is said, the road was originally constructed, 
seems to have been exhausted in the process 
of making the substructure ; for the super- 
structure is reported to be in a condition 
almost impassable to any wheeled convey- 
ance. At any rate, a saddle seemed the 
freest and most congenial seat for such a 
journey, and though we engaged a carriage, 
we determined to use it as little as possible. 
The mounting and departure of even a 
small party involves an amount of bustle, 
and includes a little army of attendants, suffi- 
cient to lend to the expedition r an excitement 
quite its own. The baggage and tents are 
laden on mules ; there is a palanquin for the 
more delicate and timid traveller; and the 
shouts of the muleteers, the imperious com- 
mands of our conductor, and the never-end- 
ing clamor of our Arab outriders, combine 
to make up a scene of strange confusion. 
There was a soothing sense of stillness as we 



JAFFA. 179 

escaped from the door of the inn, and, quit- 
ting the bustle of the town, found ourselves, 
erelong, crossing the plain of Sharon, barren 
indeed of the roses that once made it so fair 
a vision, but dotted here and there with the 
intensely brilliant blossoms of the codiquot, 
which grows wild everywhere in central Pales- 
tine, even upon soil the most sterile. As we 
dismounted and gathered a handful of them, 
their lavish wealth of coloring gave new 
meaning to the words, " If God so clothe 
the grass of the field ; " for these exquisite 
blossoms are here accounted as of no more 
value than the merest weed. 

The road from Jaffa to Jerusalem runs past 
the village of Ramleh, which some have fixed 
upon as the site of the ancient Arimathea, 
and where to-day there is a Latin convent 
which is the refuge of the benighted traveller. 
Here we had arranged to pass our first night, 
and from thence to push on, in a single day, 
to Jerusalem. It is only a few hours' ride 
from Jaffa to the convent, but one likes to 
make acquaintance with his horse for the 
first hour or two, and above all to take in an 
actual sense of his surroundings, without con- 
fusion or hurry. 

For there is something indescribably 



180 JAFFA. 

strange in the first view of scenes which 
the Bible has hallowed, and which still en- 
dure as memorials of the dealings of God 
with His chosen people. Comparatively, 
there is little of interest between Jaffa and 
Ramleh, and yet on your right as you ride 
on, just beyond yonder ridge, lies Philistia, 
and, embowered in trees to your left, gleam 
the white roofs of that Lydda where once 
Peter tarried among the Christian converts of 
the village, and where he healed the bedrid- 
den ^Eneas. You have to pause to realize 
whose were the feet, whether of eager Apos- 
tles or of shrinking converts, that have 
traversed these same plains and dwelt in 
these same yillages. And when one lifts his 
eyes, there, just before him, as it seems, rise 
those Judean hills that hide Jerusalem from 
his sight, standing upon the slopes of which 
Joshua looked down upon the fierce fight 
which his countrymen were making with the 
Amorites, in the memorable valley at his 
feet, and from whence, watching the chang- 
ing fortunes of the day, he cried, " Sun, stand 
thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in 
the valley of Ajalon ! " Amid $uch scenes 
what does it matter that the foot of the 
Moslem profanes the sacred soil ? They 



JAFFA. l8i 

may remove the ancient landmarks, and 
profane the holy places, but they cannot 
extinguish their hallowed associations. Still 
less can they stifle the emotions of awe and 
reverence with which the Christian wanderer 
must needs look upon scenery made forever 
memorable by those events which were turn- 
ing-points in Hebrew history, even as it has 
been made forever sacred by the journeys 
and ministries of Apostles and martyrs. 



III. 



A Mohammedan Graveyard — The Tower at 
Ramleh — A First Night in a Monastery — 
The Jerusalem Roadway — A First View of 
the Holy City. 

It was an hour before sunset when, mount- 
ing the crest of a hill, the white tower and 
minarets of a distant village stood out clear 
and sharp on a distant slope. The sound of 
hoofs behind me announced the approach of 
mounted travellers, and turning my head, I 
found two Arabs rapidly overtaking me. 
" Ramleh ? " I said, pointing to the distant 
towers, and getting for my answer a murmur- 
ed assent, I knew that our halting-place for 
the night was now near at hand. 

As we approached it, the solitary tower 
which distinguishes Ramleh from whatever 
point it is approached, came more distinctly 



RAMLEH. 183 

into view, and in a little while we were close 
upon the outskirts of the town, and saw on 
our right the extensive ruins of which the tow- 
er forms the most conspicuous feature. My 
companions were wearied with their day's 
journey, and anxious to push on to the shelter 
and repose of the convent ; so, taking a mount- 
ed Arab as my escort, I turned into a narrow 
lane that opened from the main road, and, af- 
ter a few moments, found myself threading my 
way among the graves of what was evidently a 
Mohammedan burying-ground. At a little 
distance, the gnarled and twisted trunks of 
the olive-trees with which it was planted, gave 
it the appearance of a New England apple- 
orchard, and the gray walls and square tombs, 
all alike blistered, and incrusted with scanty 
moss, made the scene still more familiar. The 
sheep were grazing among the graves, and the 
early Spring verdure mingled with the traces 
of harsher weather, as seen in the broken 
branches and the bleached faces of the rocks, 
made one think of some lowly God's-acre on 
one of our own northern hill-sides. Only, here 
the rude head-stones were each of them 
crowned with the coarse carving of the Mos- 
lem turban, without which no grave, whether 
of Sultan or fellah, is here accounted com- 



184 RAMLEH. 

plete. Passing on by the path winding among 
the graves, I came to a low archway of richly- 
hewn stone, and, riding through it, found my- 
self in a large enclosure not unlike the close 
of a cathedral, round three sides of which ran 
the ruins of what must once have been a state- 
ly and beautiful cloister. Many of its arches 
are still almost perfect, and as the space which 
they enclose is closely carpeted with turf, one 
recalled instinctively some such ruins as mark 
the site of Fountains or Tintern Abbey. The 
tall tower on the northern side of the enclos- 
ure stands almost intact, and though the Ara- 
bic inscription over its doorway bears the date 
a. h. 718, which is equivalent to a. d. 13 18, 
it rises as square and complete as though it 
had been reared in our own time. The in- 
scription which follows the date of its erection 
further records that it was reared by a son of 
" Our Lord the Sultan, the martyr, the King 
el-Mansur," and on the strength of this state- 
ment, no authority, so far as I can learn (with 
perhaps a single exception), seems disposed to 
dispute that the building was reared as a 
mosque, and by the Turks. And yet, if ever 
ruins proclaimed their Christian origin, these 
do. True, the sign of the Cross has been ef- 
faced, but anything more unlike Oriental arch- 



RAMLEH. 185 

itecture, anything more distinctly Norman- 
Gothic in its general characteristics, anything 
which betrays more unmistakably the handi- 
work of those warriors and builders who fol- 
lowed in the path of the Crusades — anything, 
to one who has become wonted to the aspect 
of ecclesiastical ruins in Europe, more thor- 
oughly familiar, it would be hard to conceive. 
And with this view everything in the history 
of Ramleh falls in. We know that it was oc- 
cupied by the Crusaders in 1099 ; that St. 
George was adopted as its patron saint ; and 
that one of the buildings in the town, now in 
use as a mosque, was once a Christian church, 
with a nave and aisles, principal and side 
apses, a clerestory, and every other character- 
istic of the churches of that period. We know 
that for at least 200 years it was a Christian 
city, and one, as standing at the junction of 
the great highways from Damascus to Egypt, 
and from Joppa to Jerusalem, of no mean im- 
portance. And if so, what more probable than 
that, in the days when Richard the Lion- 
hearted had his headquarters at Ramleh, this 
noble tower and its surrounding cloisters, so 
expressive of the spirit of their builders in 
their simple, sturdy grandeur, should have 
been built and hallowed for Christian uses ? 



1 86 RAMLEH. 

At any rate, it was in such a faith that I climbed 
to its summit and looked off, as the day was 
dying out of the sky, upon the blue Mediter- 
ranean on the one hand, and the mountains 
of Judea on the other. And there was some- 
thing of thankfulness in the thought that if, 
once, the grand old tower had crowned a 
Christian sanctuary, time had not spared that 
sanctuary to be profaned by Moslem feet, nor 
to see the Cross upon its summit displaced by 
the Crescent and the Star. 

One's first night within monastic walls is a 
somewhat memorable experience, even though 
no monastic vows have preceded it. Ours 
was made memorable chiefly by the comfort 
of our quarters and the simple cordiality of 
our welcome. The tales of travellers had 
prepared us for a dirty bed and a starved 
table ; but our cells were spotless in their 
cleanliness, and if a little bare as to the walls, 
and a little hard as to the pillows, yet the 
hours spent in the saddle had prepared us for 
a sleep which did not need to be courted 
with any luxurious appliances. Our fare, too, 
was wholesome, if simple, and it was served 
by a cheery, healthy-looking young friar, who 
made us thoroughly at home. He was 
Spanish, as were, we understood, the other 



RAMLEH. 187 

three or four members of the Order (all were 
Franciscans), who were associated with him. 
One of them, we learned, presided in the 
kitchen, and after our evening meal, our 
whole party adjourned thither and exchanged 
salutations with him. It seemed an odd 
realization of a " religious " vocation to spend 
one's days cooking for Protestants, Jews, 
Turks, heretics, and infidels, who might 
chance to knock at the convent-gate for food 
and lodging with the means to pay for them ; 
but the good brother seemed thoroughly 
happy in it, and could he have known that 
one of our fellow-travellers had, with facile 
pencil and artistic eye, made a most clever 
sketch of him, he would doubtless have 
rejoiced to feel that having served many a 
dish with the juice of his native olive, he was 
in turn to be " done in oil " himself. * 

It was not yet daylight when we were 
roused, the next morning, for our start, nor 
long before we found ourselves once more in 
the saddle. The morning was lovely, and 
the air, at once bracing and invigorating, 
made mere motion a delight. Our way lay 
past point after point of interest ; now Gezer, 
the long-lost royal city, whose king, attempt- 
ing to relieve Lachish, was killed by Joshua ; 



188 RAMLEH. 

and then in rapid succession past Ajalon, 
Kirjath-jearim, and the little valley of Elah. 
It is true that some authorities dispute the 
identity of the latter, and maintain that it 
lay some fifteen miles westward, nearer to the 
ancient Philistia. If they are right, then the 
little brook which we crossed, and in which I 
watered my horse, is not that from which 
David chose his smooth stone ; but I preferred 
to believe that it was, and if there was no 
better evidence, the rounded pebbles with 
which its bed was strown furnished an argu- 
ment not without its weight. 

As the traveller leaves the brook, the road 
grows narrower and the ascent steeper, and 
for those who are at home in it, the saddle is 
undoubtedly the most comfortable means of 
journeying to Jerusalem. But it ought to be 
kriown, for the benefit of those who are 
timid, or unwonted to horseback exercise, 
that there is a made carriage-way from Jaffa 
to the very walls of Jerusalem, and that its 
only defect is that it is very rough. English 
guide-books, written by those who are accus- 
tomed to English roads, as smooth as a floor 
and nearly as level, speak of the carriage- 
way to Jerusalem as all but impassable. It 
is entirely passable to any one who does not 



RAMLEH. 189 

mind being well jolted — jolted as one used 
to be in the early days of travel in our own 
White Hills. And, as a matter of fact, it is 
constantly traversed by spring wagons which 
make the journey from Jaffa sometimes in a 
single day. In a word, Jerusalem is entirely 
accessible to any but the most helpless in- 
valid. 

And that it is, must needs rob its approach 
of much of its old romance. In days when, 
as the Holy City to Jew, Turk, and Christian 
alike, it was the object of devoutest pilgrim- 
age, a journey to Jerusalem was full of expe- 
riences either of danger or of surprise. But 
our pilgrimage was marked by nothing more 
dangerous than the overturning of a palan- 
quin in which one of our party was travelling, 
and the only surprise was from the approach 
of a mounted scout sent out in advance to 
" tout " for a Jerusalem hotel. 

As he charged down upon us, mounted 
upon his fleet and flying steed, there was a 
cry, " The Bedouins ! " but as he rode up he 
drew upon us, not a pistol, but a hotel card, 
and demanded, not our purses, but our 
patronage. It was, perhaps, a wholesome 
preparation for further disappointments, and 
yet no experience of the commonplace could 



190 JERUSALEM. 

chill the emotions of awe and reverence and 
thankfulness with which, a little later, we 
climbed the last ascent that barred our way, 
and saw, lying a little before us, belted round 
by its eternal sentinels, the hills — Jerusalem ! 



IV. 

ferttttttait* 



From the House-top — The "Via Dolorosa" — 
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the 
Mosque of Omar — The Pool of Bethesda. 

It was a brilliant morning which greeted 
us when we climbed the house-top to begin 
there our first day in Jerusalem. Despite 
the prophecies of flood and cold with which 
we had been warned if we attempted to see 
the Holy Land in February, the sky was as 
clear as the brightest October day, and the 
sun as warm as many a one in our own mid- 
Summer. The Syrian air has more life in it 



JERUSALEM. 191 

than that of Egypt, and after enervating days, 
when the mid-day sun upon the Nile was for 
a little while an almost intolerable burden, it 
was singularly exhilarating to breathe once 
more the air of the hills. 

And one needs something exhilarating to 
sustain him amid the inevitable disappoint- 
ments of first days in Jerusalem. For, famil- 
iar as one's reading may have made him with 
all in the Holy City that is incongruous with 
its consecrated associations, the actual con- 
tact with those incongruities is inexpressibly 
shocking — I had almost written sickening. 
We had meant to go, first, upon the walls, 
which, being comparatively modern, are in a 
fair state of preservation, and then, passing on 
from point to point in their circumference, 
take in the general outlines of the neighbor- 
hood and the principal localities of interest. 
In such comparative solitude, I had said to 
myself, one would have a chance to grasp the 
topography of Jerusalem, undisturbed for once 
by the droning impertinences of a guide, or 
by dismal clamors for backsheesh. Circum- 
stances, however, turned our footsteps anoth- 
er way, and as I found myself on the road to 
the church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was with 
the feeling that a painful task would soon be 



192 JERUSALEM. 

over, and one be left freer for more congenial 
scenes. Some there are, doubtless, who can 
go and witness the battle-ground of Christian 
sects over what ought to be the most hallowed 
spot on earth, and be so filled with the loftier 
emotions of its supposed sacred associations, 
as to feel no shock in the recollection that to- 
day Christians of different names are kept, at 
Easter-tide, from tearing each other to pieces, 
simply by the coarse power of the Turkish po- 
lice. But I confess I recoiled from looking 
upon a spot which must needs revive such 
memories, and awaken impressions so unwel- 
come. Would that what I did see had cost 
me nothing more ! How shall I express the 
sense of shame, the utter loathing at the spec- 
tacle of bitter incongruity which now salutes 
the pilgrim to the tomb of Christ, with which 
one who comes there for the first time must, 
as it seems to me, needs be filled ? Turning 
out of a narrow street filled with Jew money- 
changers and shabby dealers in shabbier wares, 
and which is called, oddly enough, Christian 
street, you find yourself descending a flight of 
steps, which was once, you are told, a part of 
the Via Dolorosa. Along its sides, as you 
pass down, are squatted hawkers of beads, 
carved shells, crosses, and other similar wares, 



JERUSALEM. 1 93 

supposed to have attractions as memorials of 
the Holy City, jumbled together in one unin- 
viting hodge-podge with cheap jewelry, cigar- 
ette-holders, tobacco-pouches, and the like — 
the whole being arranged with a thrifty eye to 
the patronage both of the devout and the pro- 
fane. Past these the way lies across an open 
square, crowded with hucksters in tawdry im- 
ages and cheap ear-rings, until one enters the 
church which the mother of Constantine rear- 
ed over the spot where once was laid the body 
of the dead Christ. It is not a large struct- 
ure, but its roof covers, or claims to cover, 
almost every spot which the Christian heart 
reveres from its associations with the last 
hours of our Lord's earthly life. In the face 
of the most obvious improbability, nay, in ut- 
ter disregard of the most absurd contradic- 
tions, one is shown scenes and places at once 
the most remote and disconnected. The Holy 
Sepulchre, the hill of Calvary, the scenes of 
the mockery, are all pointed out as scarce a 
hundred feet from each other. You mount a 
flight of stairs and have pointed out to you 
the holes in which the three crosses stood, 
and within a foot or two of one of them the 
fracture where the "rocks were rent." And 
yet, underneath this very spot is a robing-room 
*3 



194 JERUSALEM. 

or sacristy, which is regarded as having no 
particular sanctity whatever ! But I have no 
heart to pursue the story. Of course we saw 
all that the records of travellers have made so 
familiar, and as we looked, the sense of the 
dreary hollowness and bitter mockery of the 
whole grew every moment more keen. Stand- 
ing under the dome, one noted the Coptic 
chapel, the Greek altars, the Armenian clois- 
ters, and Roman, Russian, and Austrian sanct- 
uaries and shrines. But even their own 
priests treated them with the scantiest respect, 
and Arabs and Moslems, strolling to and fro, 
did not even uncover themselves in the holy 
place. Our guide was a native of Jerusalem, 
who called himself a " Christian Greek," by 
which I presume he meant a member of the 
Greek Church ; but he told his tale with an air 
which showed how slight a realization of the 
scenes of which he spoke had ever crossed his 
mind, and even while he told it, our Cairene 
dragoman, following us about with an air of 
compassionate contempt for the silly supersti- 
tions of the Christians, bade the lad sharply 
to beware how he spattered his dapper gar- 
ments with the drippings of his candle. 

And so our pilgrimage to the supposed 
scene of the Resurrection came to an end. 



JERUSALEM. 1 95 

It would have lacked its wonted accompani- 
ment if the greasy-looking ecclesiastic who 
lighted us into the Holy Sepulchre, and who 
sprinkled us while we lingered there with 
rose-water (why, I could not divine), had let 
us out again without an eye hungry for 
backsheesh, and still more would our experi- 
ence of sight-seeing in the East have been 
exceptional if we had escaped from the porch 
of the church without a more peremptory 
challenge of the same purport. Nor did we., 
When we entered, the church doors were 
wide open, with no sign or hint of concealed 
guardians. But when we undertook to leave, 
the doors were brusquely closed in our faces, 
and we had to buy our way out with ample 
fees. It formed a fitting conclusion to the 
whole that, as we turned once more into 
the Via Dolorosa, the most conspicuous legend 
which confronted us was written over a 
drinking-shop, which thrust itself forward; 
with offers of " Vins et Bonbons des toutes les 
Varieties ." And this was the street and 
these were the scenes that the Saviour of the 
world had hallowed, in the supreme moments 
of His earthly life ! Would it not have been 
better never to have seen them at all, than, 
seeing them, to find in the seeing so much 



196 JERUSALEM. 

that shocked and wounded one's every senti- 
ment of reverence ? As I asked myself this 
question, I found myself envying one of my 
companions, whose emotions until that mo- 
ment I had hardly regarded. He was a 
Maltese servant in attendance upon our party, 
who had gone with us into every chapel, 
crypt, cave, and cloister which the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre included. And to him 
they had all been real ; no shrine so tawdry, 
no relic so impudent a fraud, no pretended 
scene of a great event so utterly and abso- 
lutely improbable, but that he had bent his 
knee and bowed his head before it in deepest 
homage of superstitious reverence. " Happy 
ignorance — blessed credulity," one found him- 
self almost in peril of crying, " so willing to 
be persuaded, nay, so eager to believe." 

Was it with a keen Moslem sense of the 
mockery of the contrast, that our Moham- 
medan dragoman arranged, in the afternoon, 
that we should go and see the Mosque of 
Omar ? At any rate, one's sense of humilia- 
tion as a Christian, could hardly have been 
made keener than by some such process. 
Standing amid the cool and spacious stillness 
of the beautiful enclosure known as the Haram, 
the mosque rises from the summit of Mount 



JERUSALEM. 1 97 

Moriah in a stately majesty which utterly 
eclipses every other building in Jerusalem. 
And within, it is as beautiful as it is noble 
without. Its vast proportions, splendid adorn- 
ments, and rich yet chastened light, make it 
a structure fitted in every way to awaken 
reverence and quicken devotion. As one 
enters it he exclaims instinctively, " If it is 
well that any human superstructure should 
mark the place hallowed as the sepulchre of 
Christ, here is a building worthy for such a 
use." As noble in its pure and stainless 
simplicity as the church of Helena is impure 
and ignoble in its tawdry shabbiness, it makes 
one understand how the Turk must turn from 
its doors with a fresh pride in his own faith 
and his own prophet, and with a fresh scorn 
for those Christians who can boast and 
wrangle so much, and yet build and adorn so 
poorly. 

Perhaps it was to teach us a healthier and 
larger view of the whole matter that our way 
home, at the end of the day, led us past the 
spot which was once the pool of Bethesda. 
Now it is no longer a pool at all, but simply a 
yawning pit, over whose mouth might be 
written the legend, " Rubbish shot here," and 
from whose depths rose the stench of every 



198 OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 

imaginable and unimaginable form of filth and 
garbage. And yet here, once, an angel came 
down and troubled the waters, and he who 
first descended into them was healed. 

And even as the Divine ministry of healing 
has not vanished out of the world, though an- 
gels no longer trouble any earthly waters, even 
so the world's heart of reverence and love for 
Christ is not dead, though foolish men profane 
His last resting-place with tawdry ceremonial, 
or dishonor it with mutual hatreds and dissen- 
sions ! 



V. 

David's Tomb — The Field Aceldama — The Pool 
of Siloam — The Garden of Gethsemane. 

No matter what view the traveller may 
take of the vexed question of the topography 
of Jerusalem, the fact still remains that the 
places of greatest interest are those outside 
its walls; for, even if it be possible to prove 



OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 1 99 

that the nominal site of the Holy Sepulchre 
is the real site, it still seems more than prob- 
able that every other most sacred spot was 
beyond the line of the present fortifications. 
There was infinite relief, therefore, in passing 
the Jaffa gate, in the thought that one's way 
was to lie, for at least a single afternoon, through 
scenery concerning whose identity there could 
be but little doubt. 

The venerable Bishop of Jerusalem, Dr. 
Gobat, had mentioned, in answer to a ques- 
tion as to the trustworthiness of tradition 
concerning sacred places in and about the 
Holy City, that he could feel positively cer- 
tain only concerning three. It was to one 
of these, the tomb of David, that our guide 
first led us, and if we had consented to judge 
it by superficial appearances, our faith would 
have been sorely shaken. Despite the un- 
doubted fact that Jerusalem has been razed 
to the ground again and again, and that, 
except the tower of Hippicus, and possibly 
one or two other fragments of buildings, there 
is nothing now remaining above the surface 
that is more than a few hundred years old— 
despite the fact, too, that whatever tombs are 
ancient must needs be below the level of the 
old city, on the buried ruins of which the 



200 OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 

present city is built ; despite the fact that an 
elevated structure as a place of burial is a 
violation of all the usages of the East, we 
were nevertheless taken upstairs into a very- 
modern looking building, standing on the 
southern slope of Mount Zion, and shown 
a sarcophagus said to contain the remains of 
David, stowed away in an upper room ! But 
little more was needed to complete the 
ghastly travesty of the whole thing, and that 
little was not wanting. The tomb, it seemed, 
formed a sort of appendage to a Moslem 
mosque. The custodian was a Moham- 
medan, whose harem was lodged almost at 
its very door, and the drapery, at once 
cheap, tawdry, and shabby, with which it 
was hung about, was in no wise different 
from that which we had seen adorning the 
tomb of many a Arab sheik. As if to snap 
the last lingering thread of one's credulity, 
the catafalque^ or tomb, was constructed so 
as to appear about ten or twelve feet long ; 
and when I asl^ed one of our Moslem attend- 
ants if he supposed David to have been so 
tall a man, he gravely assured me that he 
had no doubt of it ! 

On the other hand there is a chain of testi- 
mony which, though I may not linger to 



OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 201 

rehearse it here, seems to verify the identity 
of the spot with singular conclusiveness. 
We know that in St. Peter's time, to quote 
his own words concerning David's tomb 
(Acts ii. 29), "his sepulchre is with us to 
this day ; " and it is probable that the very 
curiosity which led Jerome, and other Chris- 
tians after him, to devote themselves almost 
exclusively to the identification of places 
having Christian associations, has preserved 
this spot from a curiosity which was some- 
times as destructive as it was irreverent. 

There is something profoundly impressive 
in the view that greets one as, riding forth 
from the enclosure which stands about the 
tomb of David, his eye falls on the bleak and 
distant hill-side, which tradition connects with 
the suicide of Judas. Here and there upon 
its rugged steeps there are trees, which over- 
hang a precipice whose sheer descent is some 
forty or fifty feet. If one ever hung suspend- 
ed from a branch of these trees, it is easy to 
see how the breaking limb would have hurled 
his body to be torn and crushed upon the 
rocks below. And thus the miserable fate of 
the traitor and apostate lives before the eye in 
a horrible reality. As one thinks of the royal 
sinner, guilty and stained with his crime, but 



202 OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 

finding his way back at last through tears and 
repentance into the favor of the Father, and 
then of that other, whose sin, not of impulse, 
but of craft and of deliberation, suffered him 
to find no place for repentance, there rises to 
the view that bleak and barren slope on which 
he took his own wretched life, and which 
seems a fitting setting to the picture of so dark 
an end. 

It is with a sense of relief that one rides on, 
and past such scenes, and, leaving the valley 
of Hinnom and the field of Aceldama behind 
him, finds his way leading down the winding 
bank of the Kedron to the Pool of Siloam. 
It is to-day as it was two thousand years ago, 
a centre of blessing alike to towns-people and 
wayfarer. As we approached it, flocks were 
grouped near it on every hand, and dismount- 
ed horsemen, camel-drivers, and donkey-boys 
were all eagerly slaking their thirst with its 
cool and limpid waters. The pool or spring 
itself lies hidden away beneath a subterranean 
archway, which is probably of comparatively 
modern date, but the stair-way leading down 
to the pool looks as though it might have been 
worn by the feet of a hundred generations, 
and I found myself, as I lingered at its head, 
picturing the approach of one whose sightless 



OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 203 

eyes and faltering steps must have aptly sym- 
boled the hesitating faith with which he felt 
his way down to those waters which were to 
give him back his sight. With what a differ- 
ent step he must have climbed those stairs 
again, as, running back, he knelt to bless the 
Hand that had so wonderfully healed him ! 

Turning to the left from the Pool of Siloam, 
the way round the walls of Jerusalem lies 
northward past the town of the same name, 
where once stood the tower which, falling, 
killed eighteen persons, and past the tombs of 
Absalom, Jehoshaphat, Zecharias the martyr, 
and St. James the Just. At least these are 
the names assigned to some imposing struct- 
ures concerning whose identity, however, 
there is only the most doubtful evidence. Why 
was it that we looked with most interest (I 
had almost written sympathy) at the reputed 
tomb of Absalom ? At any rate I did not find 
myself moved to imitate a custom of the land 
which oddly enough has found Christian im- 
itators. Both Moslem and Israelite, it seems, 
take pains, when passing the tomb, to hurl a 
stone at it as an expression of their horror at 
the unfilial conduct of Absalom ; and we had 
the example of some eminent Christian trav- 
ellers held up to us as a motive for doing the 



204 OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 

same. If we declined, it was certainly from 
no disposition to estimate lightly the sin of 
that son who all but broke his father's heart. 
But it is questionable whether such an utterly 
senseless custom, no matter how sanctioned, 
can have any other than a most unwholesome 
effect upon the ignorant Arabs who witness it. 
Our way ended, ere we turned into the city 
again, by St. Stephen's Gate, at the Garden of 
Gethsemane. Here, as at the Church of 
the. Holy Sepulchre, Latin Christianity has 
done all that it can to efface all traces of the 
identity of the spot. There is everything in 
the situation of the Garden of Gethsemane, as 
shown to-day, to indicate that it occupies a 
site near that consecrated scene of the Sav- 
iour's agony. It is on the way from Jerusa- 
lem to the Mount of Olives, it is near the 
Kedron, it is shaded by venerable olive trees. 
But, strangely enough, the very modern wall 
which encloses it excludes that part of the 
ground directly bordering upon the brook 
Kedron, close to which was undoubtedly the 
thickest shade, and therefore the most com- 
plete retirement in the whole garden. And 
then so much of the garden as is enclosed is 
deformed and disfigured by petty subdivisions 
of wooden palings, and surrounded by some 



OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 205 

dozen " stations " with the most pitifully crude 
and hideous statuary on a diminutive scale. 
Add to this a bland and plausible old monk, 
who buzzes about the garden gathering nose- 
gays, which he tenders with an insinuating 
smile, and for which he expects a liberal 
backsheesh, and you have wellnigh every influ- 
ence which could conspire to destroy the 
tender and sacred associations of the place. 
But not quite every such influence, for as you 
follow a path running round the inside of the 
walls, you come upon a tank or reservoir, evi- 
dently of recent construction, and, as evident- 
ly, of cheap and perishable material, on which 
is blazoned in broad and staring capitals the 
name of its American donor ! The utmost 
reach of questionable taste, and still more 
questionable reverence, could not well go 
further than this. 

And yet, no pettinesses of human orna- 
ment or human impertinence can quite de- 
stroy the influence of the spot. The very 
trees, which may easily be twelve hundred 
years old, and which may as easily (as is the 
case with the olive) have sprung from the 
roots of other trees long ago cut down, stand 
as worn and weather-beaten sentinels over a 
spot whose every surrounding marks it as 



206 OUTSIDE THE WALLS. 

that walk in which our Lord wrestled in 
darkness and alone; and as one lifts his eyes 
from the shadows which gather beside the 
Kedron, he sees above him — as who shall 
say the Master did not see it ? — that gate 
from which the traitor and his companions 
must needs have issued as they came to take 
Him ; and, rising beyond, the towers of that 
Jerusalem, whose children were, on the mor- 
row, to reject Him with mockery and scorn. 
It is true that nearly two thousand years have 
come and gone since then, but Olivet stands 
looking down upon the pilgrim of to-day, as 
its silent summit bent over the kneeling 
Christ, whose feet had then so lately climbed 
its streets ; and the banks of the Kedron, the 
neighboring road to Bethany, and every least 
and lowliest lineament of the landscape sa- 
lutes one now as then. And so it was in vain 
that a childish sentimentalism had profaned 
and disfigured the sacred spot with its tawdry 
adornments. Its incomparable spell was 
upon it, and we threaded its narrow paths 
with hushed voices and with throbbing 
hearts. 



VI. 

©Itttet mtir JMGf>U9* 

A Syrian Landscape — The Mount of Olives — 
An Ancient Tomb — The Road from Bethany 
to Jerusalem. 

The one spot which the eye instinctively 
seeks from any elevation near Jerusalem is 
the Mount of Olives. It is not the most 
conspicuous feature in a view from the neigh- 
boring hills, and the stately domes of the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the 
Mosque of Omar far eclipse it in those char- 
acteristics which at first arrest attention. 
But the eye turns from them almost as soon 
as their glittering finials have caught its 
notice. They are unmistakably modern and 
unmistakably artificial. But as one looks 
from whatever point at Olivet, its supreme 
charm is that it has no other adornment than 
nature. True, there are a few scattered 



208 OLIVET AND BETHANY. 

dwellings and the ugly minaret of a species 
of dwarfed mosque near its summit; but 
these are hardly noticeable from a distance, 
and they do not greatly mar the simple unity 
of the whole picture. As I saw it, and as it 
has doubtless looked to thousands of other 
pilgrims, it was the very abode of peace and 
rest. There are few strong contrasts in a 
Syrian landscape. The soft gray stone of 
the houses, the equally soft or hazy green of 
the olive-groves, and (at any rate in the 
month of February) the delicate verdure of 
turf and shrub, just putting on their Spring 
freshness, gave to the whole picture a cool 
and quiet hue, which art has often striven to 
reproduce, but which the eye must see for 
itself adequately to appreciate. How shall 
I describe the emotion of that Sunday after- 
noon on which, literally with an open Bible 
in hand, I climbed its peaceful slopes, recall- 
ing step by step the sacred events and the 
Divine footsteps by which it has been forever 
hallowed ! Here, indeed, as everywhere, 
one's instincts of reverence and one's sense 
of fitness are wounded and jarred upon by 
the presence of that alien race who, as con- 
querors of the Jew, have spoiled his holy 
places and pitched their tents amid the very 



OLIVET AND BETHANY. 209 

courts of his temple. The dirty little mosque 
to which I have referred, turned out to be 
the objective point of our guide's ascent, and 
we consented to climb its shabby minaret 
for the sake of the view which was promised 
us from its summit. But when, on descending, 
we were greeted with rather jocose familiarity 
by the custodian of the place, who turned 
out to be a friend of our attendant, and 
offered chairs, coffee, and cigarettes, one's 
vexation of spirit was very real, and I fear 
there was something of indignant disgust in 
the mood in which, a little later, I turned 
away, when, in addition, the same patronizing 
Moslem offered to show me a footprint of 
Christ's within the enclosure of the mosque 
itself! It is this easy appropriation by 
Mohammedanism of everything that it has 
chosen to claim in the traditions both of the 
Israelite and of the Christian, which has 
undoubtedly been a secret of its success. 
But it makes one's blood boil sometimes to 
hear the condescending approval with which 
the Moslem speaks of " the Prophet Jesus," 
while scoffing at the Christian credulity which 
pays Him Divine honors. 

It was with a very different feeling that we 
escaped from the precincts of the mosque, and 



2IO OLIVET AND BETHANY. 

passed on through a corn-field to the little vil- 
lage of Bethany. I twisted my way down into 
the cave which is said to be the tomb of Laz- 
arus, and visited also the house which is shown 
(by a coarse Arab virago, who " chaffed " our 
guide, and evidently thought the whole expe- 
dition an amusing farce) as that of Martha and 
Mary. The former (which is evidently a nat- 
ural cave or tomb) may be authentic, but the 
latter as obviously cannot be. Either way I 
confess I found it impossible to feel any in- 
terest in details about whose identity there 
must needs be abundant dispute. But it is. 
with quite another feeling that one takes *in 
the village of Bethany as a whole, in whose 
situation there is something inexpressibly 
beautiful and touching. I suppose it is be- 
cause so much of the human side of Christ's 
character and ministry are there disclosed to. 
us, in His undisguised pleasure in the house 
of the two sisters and Lazarus, and in the 
depth and tenderness of His affection for the 
latter, that we think of the village of Bethany 
with an interest so peculiar, and so different 
from that attaching to most other places asso- 
ciated with His earthly life. And when one 
sees it, such feelings seem, somehow, to get at 
once their explanation and their warrant. For 



OLIVET AND BETHANY. 2 1 1 

Bethany has the advantage of most convenient 
nearness to Jerusalem, and at the same time 
of peculiar and most restful isolation. We had 
approached it over the hill of Olivet, and by a 
by-path through such a'Corn-field as the Mas- 
ter passed on that Sabbath day when He and 
His disciples plucked and ate its ears of corn. 
But the usual road to Bethany is along the 
highway to Jericho, which passes round the 
south shoulder of the Mount of Olives, and 
which, after a few turns, leaves every vestige 
of the Holy City out of sight. Lying thus on 
the eastern slope of Olivet, Bethany looks off 
upon the valley along which winds the road to 
the Jordan, and every feature of which is at 
once singularly restful and rural; and this, 
as it seemed to one seeing it for the first time, 
must needs have been always its supreme 
charm. It is at once so near to Jerusalem, 
and yet so utterly removed from it. It is not 
a suburban village overlooking the Holy 
City, nor even any most distant outskirt of 
it. As the eye ranges the winding valley and 
the distant hills, they afford the perpetual 
refreshment of absolute repose. 

Was it not this which made it so welcome 
a refuge, when the day was done, to the weary 
feet of Christ ? Here, it is true, He found 



212 OLIVET AND BETHANY. 

the tenderest sympathy, and the most loyal 
and loving devotion, which poor human 
hearts could give Him. But here, too, He 
found what no human heart could give Him, 
the peace of comparative solitude, and the 
soothing influence of the infinite calm of 
nature. When the days were ended — those 
days of toil, and often seemingly fruitless 
argument — above all, when the whole human 
heart and brain were weary and sad with 
those disheartening encounters with a priest- 
hood and people who would not understand 
Him, there must have been a rare and 
blessed refreshment in turning one's back 
upon all the noise and bustle and clamor 
of the thronged city and its pressing multi- 
tudes, to rest for a while in that lowly village, 
where no sight nor sound of the town in- 
truded, and where that which spoke to eye 
and ear alike was the serene and soothing 
voice of nature. In such a home one can 
understand how the Master found a rest 
and peace which, supremely amid the closing 
hours of His ministry, He could look for no- 
where else. 

How long the neighborhood of Bethany 
and Olivet will retain these rural and retired 
characteristics is already becoming a doubt- 



OLIVET AND BETHANY. 



213 



ful question. A French chapel, with its 
wonted appendage of a convent, has lately- 
risen upon the western slopes of Olivet, and 
the Russians have begun a group of build- 
ings of the same general character, on a con- 
spicuous height near Bethany. As we passed 
the latter, toward sunset, our attention was 
attracted by a few persons standing about 
what seemed to be an open grave. Among 
them stood a priest of the Greek Rite, with 
an open book in his hands, from which he 
was, as I supposed, reading the Burial Ser- 
vice. On our nearer approach, one of the 
party advanced toward us and courteously 
invited us to enter the enclosure. On our 
doing so, it appeared that the little group 
was indeed gathered about a grave, but one 
at least a thousand years old. In digging 
over the ground, to set out trees, some Arab 
workmen had struck upon a hard substance 
some five or six feet below the surface, and 
this, on being examined, proved to be the 
top of a tomb belonging, in all probability, 
to the fifth or sixth century, when the whole 
site was occupied by an Armenian monastery. 
The top of the tomb was laid in mosaic work, 
which included an inscription, not decipherable 
by the priest, but which he was taking down for 



214 OLIVET AND BETHANY. 

further investigation. In an adjoining build- 
ing we were shown what must once have 
been the floor of the refectory of the mon- 
astery — a piece of mosaic work some twenty- 
five feet square, and very rich in color and 
design. History has already recorded how 
poorly the monks who once dwelt there suc- 
ceeded in perpetuating the Faith of the 
Master in the city that had crucified Him. 
It remains to be seen how much better their 
Russian successors, who, after a lapse of 
fifteen hundred years, propose to repeat the 
same experiment of monastic devotion, will 
succeed in reestablishing that Faith among its 
Moslem conquerors. 

The way from Bethany round the south- 
western slope of Olivet into Jerusalem is 
that which our Saviour took when, morning 
by morning, He went for the last time to the 
Temple. The road, scarped out of the rock, 
the winding path descending past Gethsem- 
ane — these may be as surely and as closely 
identified as anything in all Palestine. And 
following it, step by step, amid the lengthen- 
ing shadows of the waning day, one could 
sympathize with the feeling of a distinguished 
Englishman who, visiting Jerusalem not long 
since, is said to have dismounted here, and 



OLIVET AND BETHANY. 



215 



handing his bridle to his companion, to have 
said : " Will you lead my horse ? I cannot 
ride here. If anything relating to the earthly 
life of Christ is certain, then it is certain that 
over this very road His feet have passed. " 
Remembering this, we trod its winding course 
in silence, till suddenly a turn brought 
Jerusalem and the ancient site of the Tem- 
ple into full and commanding view ; and 
then, as if to the exclusion of every other 
thought, those words of infinite sorrow and 
of infinite meaning sprang straightway to our 
lips, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the Prophets, and stonest them which 
are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
ye would not! " 



VII. 

Sheik Yusef — A Fantasia — A First View of 
the Dead Sea — The Fountain of Flisha — The 
Hermit of Mount Quarantana. 

" A certain man went down from Jerusalem 
to Jericho, and fell among thieves ; " and lest 
we should have a similar experience, we were 
accompanied out of Jerusalem on our way to 
Jericho by a mounted escort, whose leader 
answered to the name of "Sheik Yusef," and 
whose appearance was sufficiently warlike to 
strike terror into the heart of the most reck- 
less Bedouin. And yet Yusef was himself a 
Bedawee, and the sheik of a Bedouin tribe. 
If he had not been guarding us, it is highly 
probable that he would have been taking toll 
of the travellers elsewhere in a somewhat less 
" regular " fashion, for the predatory instinct 
is ineradicable in the Bedouin, and to spoil 



JERICHO. 217 

the Frank is the very first article in their 
creed. On the more frequented routes in 
Syria there is perhaps little danger from the 
Arab, but while we were at Jerusalem a party 
encamping near Solomon's Pools were robbed, 
and this notwithstanding the fact that their 
dragoman had hired two Turkish soldiers to 
mount guard over their tents. So we cheer- 
fully paid Sheik Yusef five francs a day to 
escape the risk of being mulcted of a larger 
sum in a more irregular fashion. 

And Yusef was worth the money. A 
better specimen of the race that conquered 
the Roman and drove out the Jew, it would 
not be easy to find. Tall and slight in figure, 
silent but observant in manner, he rode his 
Arab mare as if he had been born in the 
saddle, and was the wandering warrior in 
every look and gesture. Such men throw 
light upon the history of great revolutions. 
It was such a race — so resolute, frugal, and 
hardy — that Abu Obeidah, the Moslem 
commander of the army of the children of 
the Prophet, led against Jerusalem. Yusef 
slept upon the ground, ate a crust of bread 
and a few dates, and drank from the wayside 
spring. Even so, as the reader of Washing- 
ton Irving's " Successors of Mahomet " will 



2 I 8 JERICHO. 

recall, did the Caliph Omar, that Commander 
of the Faithful who, coming to take posses- 
sion of Jerusalem, approached it riding on a 
camel, with a bag of dried bread, and another 
of dried dates, as his sole outfit. It was, 
wherever in all the possessions of Heraclius 
the Moslem met either the Christian or the 
Jew, trained self-restraint, and the toughness 
of a Spartan simplicity, that conquered races 
enervated by luxury, and demoralized by self- 
indulgence. And to-day the native Syrian is 
a formidable foe, simply because he has not 
altogether lost the same qualities. If ever the 
Jew is to win back from such a people his an- 
cient heritage, he will have to exhibit something 
better than the pauperized pusillanimity which 
is his chief characteristic in Judea to-day. 

But I have wandered from Yusef, even 
as Yusef occasionally wandered from us. 
In his case, however, it was merely to return 
amid a blaze of equestrian glory, which it 
was almost dazzling to witness. To beguile 
the tedium of our way, he and his mounted 
companion performed a " fantasia " (as it is 
called, with the accent on the letter /) for our 
entertainment. This consisted of the whole 
series of evolutions included in an encounter 
between two mounted lancers, and was the 



JERICHO. 219 

very perfection of lightning-like rapidity and 
graceful movement. Yusef s companion was 
a somewhat ancient and toothless Arab, who 
was almost grotesque in his ugliness, but who 
assured us that he had once been the drag- 
oman of Lady Hester Stanhope (who, as it 
will be remembered, afterward married an 
Arab sheik, and died near Damascus), and 
that Lady Hester had been at one time 
anxious to marry him. The story is only 
worth repeating as illustrating the boundless 
pride and conceit of a race who hold all 
other peoples in habitual contempt, and who 
believe, as I was told by a clergyman of the 
Church of England who has been for some 
time at work among them, that the Sultan, as 
the Commander of the Faithful, is literally 
the king of kings, and that he crowns every 
monarch who is reigning, as at present they 
all reign, by his permission, in Europe ! 

We were glad, however, of even ever so 
conceited an escort, especially when, while 
passing through one of the narrow and tor- 
tuous denies which wind down into the valley 
of the Jordan, we came upon a little cairn or 
pile of stones, placed in the middle of the 
road to mark the spot where, a few days be- 
fore, a Bedawee had been shot while attempt- 



2 20 JERICHO. 

ing to rob some travellers. But all thoughts 
of possible danger were banished when, a few 
moments afterward, toward the close of our 
day's journey, another turn of the road 
brought us out upon an open plateau, from 
which we caught our first view of the Dead 
Sea. It was a moment of utter surprise. 
One expects the Dead Sea to be as dismal a 
feature in the landscape as its dreary name 
implies, and I recalled the strong phrase of a 
traveller who has written of it as " the black- 
ened mirror of desolation." But in truth 
nothing could have been lovelier than the 
exquisite blue of its waters (rivalling the 
Mediterranean in this), and the soft and em- 
purpled framework of its surrounding hills. 
The view of modern Jericho, on the othe r 
hand, which lay before us at our feet, was fa 
more depressing ; and even the miserable 
Arab huts which compose it seem to rest 
under the ban of that ancient curse which 
long ago forbade the daring that should ven- 
ture to rebuild it : " Cursed be the man before 
the Lord that riseth up and buildeth this 
city, Jericho ; he shall lay the foundation 
thereof in his first-born " (Joshua vi. 26). 

Our party was weary and way-worn by the 
time we reached the mud hut called, by a 



JERICHO. 221 

most generous courtesy, the "hotel," where 
we were to lodge for the night, and with a 
single companion I rode on to visit what re- 
mains of ancient Jericho, and to see, also, the 
fountain now known as Ain es Sultan, which 
a very strong chain of testimony indicates as 
that whose waters were cured of their bitter- 
ness by Elisha. Dismounting, we tasted the 
stream that bursts out at the base of the hill, 
and found it at once sweetish and tepid. 
The remains of a large basin can be traced 
close to it, indicating that in other days the 
water must have been husbanded as superior 
to the brackish streams close to the Dead 
Sea. Of the ancient Jericho itself there is 
literally nothing visible above the surface of 
the ground, except perhaps one or two huge 
rubbish heaps which have been dug over 
recently by Captain Wilson and other English 
explorers, but without success. And so there 
was little to distract one's thoughts from the 
companion of Elijah, who had so early in his 
greater responsibility stood beside the bub- 
bling spring in which now our horses 
quenched their thirst. On our way down 
into the valley, we had skirted for a little the 
Wady Kelt, undoubtedly the Brook Kerith, 
or Cherith, where Elijah was fed by the 



2 2 2 JERICHO. 

ravens (I. Kings xvii. 1-7), and, peering down 
into its shadowy depths, one realizes the 
loneliness which its gloomy retirement in- 
volved. On the contrary, standing beside 
Ain es Sultan it seemed as if a site command- 
ing the whole of the broad valley of the Jor- 
dan had been chosen on which Elisha should 
vindicate his authority as the successor of the 
elder prophet. 

There remained scarcely an hour of day- 
light when we had finished our explorations, 
but above us rose Mount Quarantana, which 
tradition has associated with our Lord's Temp- 
tation, and dotting its face at an elevation of 
several hundred feet were some rows of her- 
mits' cells, formerly occupied by religious dev- 
otees, but, as we understood, long since aban- 
doned. There was a tradition that some of 
them contained remains of former decorations 
in color and carving, and as my companion 
was an artist, we determined to scale the side 
of the mountain and examine them. The 
scramble up the narrow path, literally scratch- 
ed out of the rocky face of the mountain, was 
no light undertaking ; but we were sorely per- 
plexed when we found our progress barred by 
an iron door, which, however, yielded to pres- 
sure, and admitted us to a smooth open space 



JERICHO. 223 

formed by a projecting rock, and forming an 
entrance to a series of caves running along the 
face and into the centre of the mountain. In 
one of these a fire was burning, and presently, 
pushing aside a curtain which closed an open- 
ing opposite to that by which we had entered, 
a venerable looking man came forward, and 
greeting us with grave courtesy, tendered us 
the hospitalities of his hermit retreat. He 
turned out to be a monk of the Greek Church, 
who, after a long life spent as a sailor, during 
which he had visited Australia, Liverpool, 
New York, and other ports, had retired to this 
solitary spot to spend the remainder of his 
days in acts of religious devotion. I shall 
never forget those sombre and mysterious sur- 
roundings, with their labyrinths of rocky 
chambers, amid which, as the night closed 
down, a moving lamp carried by one or the 
other of this monk's only companions, flashed 
fitfully, casting ghostly shadows as it was borne 
to and fro. It was verily a hermit solitude, and 
as we left it and felt our way down again in the 
gathering darkness, we found ourselves wonder- 
ing what had been the vicissitudes of that rest- 
less and roaming life which had found its way 
hither at last, to rest and pray, and, mayhap, 
to repent, with strong crying and tears. 



VIII. 

lflf$ Jteair Jits nt& % % xrrirmn 

A Bath in the Dead Sea — Some Historic Mem- 
ories — Crossing the Jordan — An Arab Sword 
Dance. 

The Winter traveller in Palestine, if he in- 
curs the perils of its storms, escapes the mis- 
eries of its intenser heats. And this, in the 
valley of the Jordan, is a consideration of no 
little moment. At its mouth, where it empties 
into the Dead Sea, the river is some 1,300 feet 
below the level of the Mediterranean, and in 
February the heat is fierce enough to make 
the scantiest shade, after a little, inexpressibly 
grateful. It was a cloudy morning when we 
set out from our khan for the Dead Sea, and 
the journey across the desert expanse which 
stretches from the huts composing modern 
Jericho to the shores of the sea, was less try- 
ing than we expected. But when we reached 



THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 225 

its pebbly beach, the blue expanse was too 
tempting to be resisted, and, disregarding all 
warnings, we resolved to refresh ourselves 
with a bath. My companion was in the water 
before me, and took to it, after a swimmer's 
fashion, head foremost. As he rose after his 
dive, he wore a stunned and bewildered ex- 
pression, and it was only when I was about to 
follow his example, that he spluttered" out, 
with some difficulty, the warning cry, " Don't 
put your head under this water ; " and then, 
as soon as he could, proceeded to tell me why. 
The water is extremely grateful, and even ex- 
hilarating, to the skin ; but when it enters the 
ears, eyes, and nostrils, it is exquisitely pain- 
ful, and my fellow-traveller suffered through- 
out the day for his rashness, besides having his 
hair converted into a species of salt matting, 
which it required repeated washings in the 
Jordan, later on, to restore to its normal con- 
dition. 

With this exception, bathing in the Dead 
Sea has singular attractions, and when taken 
into account in connection with the warm and 
uniform temperature during the Winter 
months, it is surprising that it has not become 
a resort for persons with weak lungs. If the 
French succeed in building their proposed 

x 5 



226 THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 

railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem (which, how- 
ever, they are not likely to do, as the question 
has already become an ecclesiastical one, be- 
ing made an issue between the Greek and 
Latin Churches), something of the sort may 
be attempted. 

Undoubtedly the most impressive feature of 
the Dead Sea is its aspect of desertion. Not 
only does no fish swim in it, nor (save as a 
rare exception) does any bird fly above it, no 
keel cleaves its deep blue waters, nor does any 
sail traverse its length or breadth. And yet, 
as we wandered along its shores, and traced 
its fading outlines by the vanishing ranges of 
the hills of Moab, its beauties recalled Como 
and Maggiore, and the soft haze that melted 
into the distant horizon gave it all the charm 
of an Italian landscape. How must it have 
looked, we found ourselves speculating, to 
that patient and dauntless leader who, gazing 
down upon it from those summits of Pisgah, 
which rose just above us as we turned our 
faces eastward, saw in it one more obstacle 
between himself and that promised country 
which he was from thence to see, but which 
he might not enter ! And what must it have 
been before its waves buried those Cities of 
the Plain, whose ruins tradition declares may 



THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 227 

still be traced, when the surface of the sea is 
exceptionally calm, showing its salty and sul- 
phurous depths ? Such were some of the 
questions which occupied us as we mounted 
our horses and rode regretfully away ; for I 
must own that I saw no object of merely nat- 
ural interest in Palestine that kindled so much 
unsatisfied curiosity as the Dead Sea. Its 
mysterious origin, the greater mysteries which, 
it may be, are hidden in its depths, and then 
the tragedies whose ruins strew its shores, all 
these form a combination that challenges in- 
quiry, and kindles the traveller's enthusiasm. 
Ere we turned our faces toward the Jordan, 
we strained our glasses in one long look, to 
catch, if possible, some faint outline of the 
fortress of Masada, a place not mentioned in 
the Bible, but tragically associated with the 
closing days of Jewish national history. It 
was to this tower, built by Jonathan Macca- 
beus in the second century, and reenforced 
and adorned by Herod the Great as a place of 
final retreat, that a band of Jews retired when 
Jerusalem was taken by Titus. They were 
pursued by a Roman commander, Flavius 
Silva, and the tower was besieged for months 
without yielding. At length a breach was 
made, and late one night the Romans prepar- 



228 THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 

ed for a final attack. When they made it in 
the morning, they found no single hand raised 
to resist them, and entered the walls only to 
discover Herod's splendid apartments a heap 
of smoking ruins. ' As they pushed on, an old 
woman crept from a hiding-place, and then 
another, and then a few frightened children. 
Their story was soon told. They were the 
sole survivors of 967 persons, who, rather than 
surrender, had first turned their swords upon 
their own wives and children, and then drawn 
lots who should be the executioners of their 
brethren. When two alone remained, one of 
these dispatched his fellow, and then, setting 
fire to the palace, fell upon his own sword. 
Such a page — blood-stained, but heroic — 
seems somehow a fitting close to that earlier 
volume of Hebrew history, to which these days 
of their smooth, cringing, money-getting, and 
emasculated descendants, afford no promise 
of a fitting successor. 

I must needs own that it did not greatly 
comfort us as we turned away in an unsatis- 
fied curiosity from the Dead Sea, to find our- 
selves standing by the banks of the Jordan. 
A devout Scotchman, whose volume on the 
Holy Land is full of most interesting remin- 
iscences, utters something like a lament over 



THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 229 

the want of enthusiasm with which other 
travellers have greeted the waters of the Jor- 
dan. We gladly admired his enthusiasm; 
but we found it quite in vain to attempt to 
emulate it. Is it a bit of American boastful- 
ness to say that to one accustomed only to 
English and Scotch rivers, the Jordan may 
easily seem a very commanding stream ? At 
any rate, it is a meagre and a muddy rivulet 
compared, with what we are wont to know by 
the name of a river. Undoubtedly it may 
have been more imposing in other days, and 
we must also bear in mind its comparative 
attractions to a people who came to its brink, 
as did the Hebrews, from what was, relatively, 
a sterile and unwatered country. But I con- 
fess I found myself warming with something 
of sympathy toward Naaman, especially as I 
had just been hearing, while in Jerusalem, 
from a friend fresh from their banks, of the 
pure, affluent, and sparkling streams of Abana 
and Pharpar. If the three rivers were then 
what they are now, the rivers of Damascus 
must needs have seemed " better than all the 
waters of Israel." 

But we gratefully pitched our tents beside 
the spreading shade, and recalled the grand 
and sacred memories which would make the 



230 THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 

bank of a far meaner stream than the Jordan 
consecrated ground. As we did so, we wit- 
nessed a scene which taught us how well 
adapted the Jordan must have been to be a 
barrier between the Israelites and their 
heathen neighbors among the hills of Moab. 
Two men, one of them mounted, came down 
to the shore, and attempted to swim across. 
For the first few strokes it appeared easy 
enough, but presently a fierce current caught 
them and carried them down toward the Dead 
Sea as if they had been so many feathers. It 
seemed they were experts in the art of deal- 
ing with the river, for, after a long and hard 
struggle, in which, again and again, they 
seemed just upon the point of sinking, they 
crawled out upon the bank, breathless and 
exhausted. And so we saw how, save to 
practised swimmers and exceptionably power- 
ful men, the waters of the Jordan must have 
offered an impassable barrier. 

Our camp was near the spot where the 
Israelites are supposed to have crossed on 
their entrance into the Promised Land, and 
where our Lord is said to have been bap- 
tized. So far as I could learn, there is no 
warrant for either of these traditions ; but 
they are sufficiently credited to bring to the 



THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 23 1 

spot an annually-increasing number of pil- 
grims of the Greek and Coptic Churches, 
who wash in the Jordan with exemplary de- 
voutness, but who, it is to be feared, in the 
case, at any rate, of the members of the 
Russo-Greek Church, do not easily or often 
wash again. It seems almost cruel to speak 
otherwise than tenderly of any, even the most 
ignorant, devotion to the land of Christ and 
the scenes of His earthly ministry ; but one 
cannot but regret that there is so little in the 
vast majority of European pilgrims, whether 
in conduct or manners, to commend them to 
the respect or admiration of Arab or Israelite. 
They are singularly ignorant, repulsively 
dirty, and pitiably superstitious. But what 
can be expected of Cossack peasants or Greek 
palmers, when Monsignor Capel thinks it 
seemly to celebrate Mass on the banks of the 
Jordan with two little Arabs to keep the flies 
away, and a Scotch nobleman, his latest titled 
pervert, prostrate on a rug before the Host, 
beneath the rays of a burning sun ! Surely, no 
folly of ignorant homage to supposed sacred 
places can equal that utter misconception of 
true reverence which is illustrated in celebrat- 
ing the most sacred ordinance of the Christian 
faith before an audience of scoffing Arabs. 



232 THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN. 

For it is to these, to-day, that the banks of 
the Jordan are given up. They came and 
performed their hideous sword-dance for our 
entertainment in the evening, and more repul- 
sive and degraded specimens of their race we 
had not seen. They are said to perpetuate 
the worst vices of the Cities of the Plain, and 
they are thievish and treacherous to a man. 
And such a people it is who sit down to-day 
amid the vines and fig-trees of that neglected 
but still fruitful valley which God once gave 
to Israel as its exclusive possession ! Verily, 
once Israel " stretched out her branches unto 
the sea, and her boughs unto the river; " and 
now u the wild boar out of the wood doth root 
it up, and the wild beasts of the field," aye, 
men worse than wild beasts, " devour it." 



IX. 

An Eastern Highway — A Tomb on Exhibition 
— The First View of Bethlehem — The 
Manger and its Moslem Guardians. 

A visit to Bethlehem has a double' charm, 
which, ordinarily, one does not anticipate. 
Its associations with the Nativity are apt, un- 
til the traveller finds himself upon the ground, 
to eclipse all others. But in fact the whole 
neighborhood is perfumed with memories 
alike sacred and stirring, and there are pages 
in the elder Testament which get, in a sense 
quite preeminent and singular, new life and 
meaning as one reads them surrounded by its 
clustering hill-sides. 

There is something to prepare one for this 
in the journey from Jerusalem. It is a throng- 
ed and animated highway that leads out from 
the Holy City, and winding down through the 



234 BETHLEHEM. 

Valley of Hinnom, climbs up again toward the 
Convent of Mar Elias. On the morning on 
which we traversed it, the long trains of cam- 
els and dromedaries, laden with merchandise 
from Arabia, met us at every turn. " Have a 
care of thy camel, O driver ! " shouted our 
dragoman at almost every step ; but it seemed 
to me that the Persian traders whom we met 
rather resented the arrogance of this Egyptian 
servant of the despised Franks, and showed 
no particular eagerness to yield us the road. 
At such a moment the whole scene on that 
night at the inn in Bethlehem rose up before 
the mind with singular vividness, and one 
could understand how the pushing and pros- 
perous merchantmen of those days could easi- 
ly have been as indifferent to the comfort of 
the traveller then as now. Nor only this. 
Somehow the camels and their turbaned at- 
tendants took us back to those still earlier 
times when certain merchantmen, going down 
into Egypt, chanced upon Joseph and his 
brethren, and bought him as a slave for the 
household of King Pharaoh. But it was not 
long before we came upon a landmark which 
recalled the events of patriarchal days with 
still greater definiteness. This was the tomb 
of Rachel, which stands close by the road-side, 



BETHLEHEM. 235 

on the way to Bethlehem, and concerning 
whose identity there is scarcely any doubt. 
Like all tombs to be seen in Palestine to-day, 
it is surmounted by a dome, and the present 
structure is undoubtedly modern. But there 
is a remarkably clear chain of evidence con- 
necting the spot with the original event of 
Rachel's burial, and it is a curious fact that 
the tomb is a shrine to which Jews, Moslems, 
and Christians alike resort with equal rever- 
ence. When we approached it, however, we 
found that the door was barred, and on in- 
quiry learned that the property has lately been 
acquired by a thrifty Israelite, who takes ad- 
vantage of the universal interest in the spot to 
exact a fee for admission to this resting-place 
of one of his ancestors. We would have paid 
the fee willingly enough, though assured be- 
forehand that there was nothing of interest to 
be seen within the tomb, but on inquiry we 
learned that it was not one of the days for its 
exhibition. 

A ride of a few moments more brought us 
in sight of Bethlehem, and as we saw the slop- 
ing hill-sides which surrounded it, already 
green with the early harvest, the whole story 
of Ruth who once gleaned among the fields of 
Boaz rose up before us. A few steps more 



236 BETHLEHEM. 

and we stood beside the well for whose water 
David longed when hidden in the cave of 
Adullam. So, at any rate, tradition has des- 
ignated a well on the brow of the hill near the 
village, and whether it may be relied upon or 
not, we knew that it was to the house of Jesse 
the Bethlehemite that Samuel came with his 
horn of oil to anoint the youthful David. Be- 
fore us, as we looked, were the flocks scatter- 
ed among the rocks, and a youthful shepherd, 
calling to a straggler here and there, made the 
patriarchal employments of those pastoral 
days to live again. 

But everything else is lost sight of in the 
supreme and absorbing interest of the Event 
of the Manger. It is true that ecclesiasticism 
has done wellnigh everything that could be 
done to destroy, or else to pervert, the sur- 
roundings of the original inn and of every- 
thing pertaining to it. The " inn " of the Gos- 
pels was nothing more than a khan or huge 
enclosure such as we saw a little later in the 
neighborhood of Solomon's Pools ; and the 
stable, there seems every reason to believe, 
was no more than a cave in the hill-side, such 
as I saw repeatedly on the way to the valley 
of the Jordan, into which animals are driven 
at nightfall, after which the mouth of the cave 



BETHLEHEM. 237 

is guarded or else closed with loose stones. 
Now the whole spot, if indeed it can be iden- 
tified at all, is built over with monastic build- 
ings, including the Church of the Nativity, 
which is really two or three churches in one. 

To be sure, we were prepared for some- 
thing of the sort by the ecclesiastical rivalries 
which gather about the Holy Sepulchre. But 
there one is at least permitted to go about 
without perpetual surveillance, while at Beth- 
lehem you are handed over at once to a monk 
(a very bland and affable gentleman, to be 
sure), who never leaves you from the moment 
of your arrival until your departure. As, 
usually, he is a Latin, you get only the Latin 
aspect of the situation, and there was a 
ghastly mockery in the decorous scorn with 
which this pious personage, while showing us 
the way amid the subterranean wanderings of 
the church, pointed out to us a service being 
said in an adjoining chapel by his Armenian 
fellow-Christians. This is the spirit which 
rules in the breasts of men who have chosen 
it as their "vocation " to lead a " religious " 
life on the spot where Christ was born, and 
over which angels hovered, singing " Glory to 
God in the highest, and on earth peace, good- 
will toward men ! " But a yet more bitter 



238 BETHLEHEM. 

incongruity was reserved for us. We followed 
our cowled and shaven leader down a flight 
of steps, and found ourselves in a cave in the 
solid rock, a niche in the side of which is 
marked with a star, round which runs the 
legend, "Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Christ 
natus est. 1 ' It is the spot where uncounted 
pilgrims have knelt as the birthplace and 
cradle of the Prince of Peace; and yet, so 
close beside it that his musket grazed you as 
you stood, with an air of mixed weariness and 
contempt which no words of mine can paint, 
stood a Turkish soldier detailed by a Moslem 
Sultan to prevent Christian devotees from 
shedding each other's blood on the very 
stones which, if tradition is to be believed, 
were once their infant Saviour's resting- 
place ! Amid such surroundings I confess my 
curiosity was soon satisfied ; and I sought the 
open air and pure sunshine, after the tawdry 
decorations and stifling odors of oil and in- 
cense which marked the subterranean portions 
of the Church of the Nativity, with unspeak- 
able relief. 

On the way, however, we turned aside to 
see the square vault carved out of the rock, 
which was once the cell and study of St. Je- 
rome. It is a spot concerning whose identity 



BETHLEHEM, 239 

there can be scarcely a doubt, and amid its 
bare and austere surroundings the thoughts 
which had been choked or dissipated by the 
scenes and accessories of the chapel of the 
Nativity reasserted themselves with a strange 
force. After all, this was Bethlehem, and on 
the hills and slopes about us the eyes of the 
Incarnate Son had for the first time opened. 
With the thought came a new color to the 
sky and a new sweetness in the air. From 
the summit of the monastery we could see 
the road which Joseph, with the Virgin and 
the Holy Child, must have taken in their 
flight into Egypt. Far away to the eastward 
was the silver thread of the Jordan, and be- 
yond, the hills of that Moab from which Ruth 
had found her way to Bethlehem. As we 
looked off, the landscape was a very poem of 
peaceful beauty, and, as such we strove to 
read in it nature's silent prophecy of a peace, 
one day, though late, to come to sinning and 
sorrowing humanity, through Him who there 
entered the world by the gateway of a help- 
less infancy. 



X. 






A Scene near the Walls of the Temple — The 
Hebrew Lament — The Jews and Jerusalem 
— Missions in Jerusalem. 

On the eve of departure from the Holy Larid 
it is not unnatural that one's thoughts should 
revert to its ancient people. To-day, of 
course, they are only one element, and that, in 
many aspects (despite their numbers), the fee- 
blest and most insignificant element in Jeru- 
salem. But as one meets them in its narrow 
and dirty streets, as shabby and unclean in 
aspect as their shabbiest and least cleanly sur- 
roundings, he cannot forget that these are the 
chosen people, and that theirs are promises 
which many of the devoutest minds in Chris- 
tendom believe to be still awaiting their grand- 
est fulfilment. And so you find yourself scru- 



THE JEWS' WAILING-PLACE. 241 

tinizing them with a peculiar curiosity, which 
much that you see only helps to stimulate 
without greatly satisfying. 

I mention this because it would seem as if 
one almost needed some excuse for at least 
one indulgence of that curiosity which at first 
seems hardly defensible. We had learned 
that at a point just outside the enclosure of 
the Mosque El-Aksa, at a spot which tradi- 
tion indicates as part of the foundation-walls 
of the Jewish temple, the Jews were accus- 
tomed to assemble on Friday afternoons, and 
bewail their oppressed condition and the deg- 
radation of their holy places. Indeed, some 
one at our hotel had made an effort to witness 
the spectacle, and going to the place on a 
stormy afternoon had found, as he subsequent- 
ly described the scene, two old women crouch- 
ed under an umbrella, mumbling certain im- 
precations from the Psalms of David. The 
scene as thus depicted seemed only too much 
in accordance with what we had already seen 
among the Jews, whose indolence and reluc- 
tance to encounter any discomfort is greatly 
encouraged by the condition of idleness in 
which the mistaken charity of wealthy Israel- 
ites in London and elsewhere too largely main- 
tains them. 
16 



242 THE JEWS' WAIL1NG-PLACE. 

On the day of our visit to the " Jew's wail- 
ing-place," as it has come to be called, the 
scene was, however, a very different one. The 
sky was cloudless, and the .air as soft as Sum- 
mer. Winding down a narrow and dirty lane, 
we came suddenly, on turning a corner, upon 
an assemblage numbering perhaps two hun- 
dred persons, of both sexes, and apparently of 
every rank in society, the most of whom were 
ranged along the wall of large stones which 
the famous painting of Gerome has made fa- 
miliar, and which, whether it be a part of the 
foundation of Solomon's Temple or not, is un- 
doubtedly the remnant of a very ancient 
structure. Standing with their faces, in some 
instances, pressed closely against the rugged 
stone wall, was a row of men and women, the 
men standing by themselves and the women 
by themselves, engaged in repeating passages 
from the seventy-fourth and seventy-ninth 
Psalms.* 

I had heard of this observance from others, 
and expected to find it a formal and mechani- 
cal performance, much like the recitation of 
the Psalter as one hears it in Jewish syna- 
gogues at home. But in truth nothing could 

* In the Appendix will be found a vivid and literal translation of 
the passages used on these occasions^ which has been made by the 
Rev. L. C. Newman. 



THE JEWS' WAILWG-PLACE. 243 

be more different or less mechanical. There 
were exhibitions of feeling so intense and so 
uncontrolled that it became, in some instances, 
most painful to witness them, and I confess 
that, sitting calmly on my horse, a mere spec- 
tator of such passionate outbursts of emotion, 
I felt as if I were almost guilty of an indeco- 
rum. There were aged women, with their 
heads bowed against the chill stone, sobbing 
out, in their ancient Hebrew tongue, such 
words as " Lord, the heathen are come into 
Thine inheritance ; Thy holy temple have they 
defiled," amid floods of tears, and with parox- 
ysms of grief which shook the whole frame ; 
and near them stood strong men, to whose 
tones it was impossible to listen for even a 
few moments without being affected by them. 
One of these was a man a little past middle 
life, whose dress indicated him to be a Polish 
Jew, and whose rapid and impassioned recita- 
tion of the particular Psalms I have referred 
to had in it something of that magnetic qual- 
ity which is invariably found in those who are 
the leaders in " revivals," and other popular 
religious movements. In his hands he held 
an open copy of the Hebrew Psalter, over 
which his face was bent, and whose pages 
were literally blurred with his tears. Around 



244 THE JEWS' WAILING-PLACE. 

him stood a group, some of them his own 
country-people, but others of various nation- 
alities, who, from time to time, joined in the 
verses which he was reading. One of these 
was a Portuguese Jew (as I learned afterward), 
of singularly dignified and stately presence — 
a person whose dress and bearing evidently 
indicated him to be some one of consequence. 
He succeeded better than those about him in 
controlling his feelings, but, while there was 
no vehement outburst, there was something in 
the profound grief of his face, with its air of 
settled melancholy, and the eyes red with 
weeping, which was even more affecting. Af- 
ter a little I dismounted from my horse, and 
walked slowly along the line, only to find at 
every point in it the same evidences of strong 
and intense emotion. It was not until I turn- 
ed to ride away that I encountered anything 
incongruous with the sombre sadness of the 
whole spectacle, and that was from the lips of 
a richly-dressed Arab, who said, with a sneer, 
" They may weep as much as they choose, but 
Jerusalem will never be theirs again/' 

Certainly not by such means, which are 
pitiful enough, after all. For, though the 
Arab believes the Sultan to be the king of 
kings, and the crowner of the crowned, Chris- 



THE JEWS' WAILING-PLACE. 245 

tendom knows very well that there is no 
feebler potentate upon a throne. And, weak 
as are the Jews in Jerusalem, they are strong 
enough upon 'Change, whether in London, 
Paris, Frankfort, or New. York. If a few great 
Hebrew capitalists cared enough for their 
Holy City to risk a loan to the Sublime Porte, 
they could make such terms with the Sultan 
as would secure to them Jerusalem, and half 
of Syria besides. But as it is, the religious 
enthusiasm of the modern Hebrew finds its 
chief exhibition in the well-meant, but most 
unwise, benefactions of Sir Moses Montefiore, 
who maintains large numbers of Israelites in 
idleness, and has built alms-houses, etc., which 
are filled thus far, if common report is to be 
believed, with those who least deserve such 
shelter. 

In truth, the Jews in Jerusalem present a 
problem no less perplexing than that which 
they offer for the solution of Christian people 
anywhere else. The Church of England is 
doing a good if not extensive work among 
them, under the oversight of Bishop Gobat ; 
but the discouragements and difficulties of 
that work, it is hardly possible, save on the 
ground, to appreciate.. Nevertheless, as I 
learned from the Rev. Mr. Walton, at present 



246 THE JEWS' WAILING-PLACE. 

at the head of the mission work there, there 
is, beside the work in the schools, a work of 
equal interest among adults who voluntarily 
seek the missionaries and take up their resi- 
dence in the Inquirers' Home, and who from 
thence pass by baptism into the fellowship of 
the Church. Some of these converts are 
among the most respected citizens of Jerusa- 
lem, and by their daily walk and conversation 
adorn the doctrine of their Master. But they 
are not many in number, and any one who ex- 
hibits the least disposition to look into the 
matter of Christianity must do it, as in primi- 
tive days, almost at the risk of his life. More 
than once when a young man has sought the 
Inquirers' Home by night and by stealth, he 
has been pursued thither by his relatives and 
acquaintances, who have stormed the house 
and taken him away by force. And what 
complicates the work is the hostility to the 
missionaries, not only on the part of the Jews, 
but also of the Mohammedans. The Moslem 
at once hates and despises the Christian, and 
this feeling, which is more or less intense 
elsewhere, seems, for some reason or other, to 
culminate in Jerusalem. It is only a few 
months since the missionary, Mr. Walton, was 
attacked at night by some Arabs, who had so 



VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 247 

far the sympathy of the police that one of them 
stood within a few feet during the whole prog- 
ress of the outrage without the slightest sign 
of interference. Under these circumstances, 
one cannot but honor the courage and devo- 
tion of those who persevere in labors thus 
hedged about by dangers and discourage- 
ments. 



XI. 



The Palestine of the Imagination and the 
Palestine of Fact — The Rewards of Travel 
in the Holy Land — Its Comparative Facility. 

In concluding these reminiscences, there are 
one or two things which should, perhaps, be 
said, if only to prevent misapprehension. One's 
first impressions of the Holy Land will be apt 
to include a considerable element of disap- 



248 VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 

pointment, and, as has already been indicated, 
something of the shock with which one dis- 
covers the most sacred localities profaned by 
the incongruous character of their surround- 
ings, will be apt to transfer itself to the de- 
scriptions which he may give of them. And, 
as a consequence of this, the question may 
very naturally be asked, " Is it, after all, worth 
while to visit the Holy Land?" In other 
words, is not very much of what one sees in 
Palestine so painful and disillusionizing (if I 
may coin such a word) as to make it at least 
doubtful whether it is not wiser to stay away? 
It is something undoubtedly to have a more 
exact and minute knowledge of the land hal- 
lowed by the footsteps of patriarchs and 
prophets, and most of all, by those of the 
Master and His Apostles ; but is it not some- 
thing more to be able to preserve our ideal 
Holy Land unspoiled by any rude disclosures 
of a degenerate age and people ? 

Of course, the answer to this question will 
depend somewhat upon the mental constitu- 
tion of those who ask it. There are some nat- 
ures to whom the creations of the imagina- 
tion are more precious and more helpful than 
the ruder contact with actual fact. But most 
persons, it may safely be presumed, will prize 



VISITS. TO THE HOLY LAND. 249 

most the attainment of definite information, 
and will find in it, despite the presence of any 
element that may shatter cherished illusions, 
the most substantial help to a reverent and 
intelligent reading of the two Testaments. - 

Certainly, this was my own experience. 
When in the Holy Land, I was pained, as 
many others have been, with the often dismal 
incongruity between its traditions and its peo- 
ple, and still more between its most holy 
places and the moral and religious atmosphere 
that surrounds them. It is impossible that 
this should be otherwise, unless one has ceas- 
ed to feel at all. No amount of familiarity 
with, for instance, the ecclesiastical quarrels 
which annually take place around the Holy 
Sepulchre, if that familiarity has been derived 
merely from books, can make one insensible 
to the shock which he must needs receive 
when he actually witnesses such quarrels, or 
the consequences of them, with his own eyes. 
And nothing, I think, is more natural than 
that sifch a feeling should find somewhat 
strong expression. 

But, on the other hand, there are other im- 
pressions far more vivid and more enduring, 
of which, for a very different reason, a travel- 
ler is apt to say far less. If, to such a one, 



250 VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 

the sight of Jerusalem itself, of the Mount of 
Olives, of the Garden of Gethsemane, is a vis- 
ion of which he has been dreaming all his life 
— if that vision shows to him scenes which are 
associated with all that is to him most pre- 
cious and most hallowed, he will, unless his 
enthusiasm is of a very superficial nature, be 
very guarded in its expression. Effusive ut- 
terance is not, I venture to submit, either 
natural or easy, where one feels most deeply. 
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
does, doubtless, speak, but not always, nor 
when the heart is most full, with many words 
nor with " gushing " volubility. I remember 
hearing, some years ago, a young girl, while 
watching a sunrise over Mont Blanc from the 
terrace at Chamounix, exclaim, while her feat- 
ures were for the moment transfigured by 
the double light of her own emotions and of 
the splendors which they reflected, " How 
wonderful ! " and though there was much elo- 
quence on the occasion, from artistic, and 
poetic, and even theological lips, tKat one 
word, vibrating as it was with the intense feel- 
ing which throbbed behind it, seemed to me 
to be far more expressive than all the rest. 

Even so, nay, rather far more, is this true 
of what one sees in Syria. I think it is quite 



VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 25 1 

impossible to see it without the stirring of 
deeper feelings, beside which any emotion of 
disappointment or pain fades into compara- 
tive nothingness. If I may venture to refer 
to my own experience, I find that everything 
in Palestine that at all shocked me, or jarred 
upon my sense of reverence, has, somehow, 
faded out of my memory, while Olivet, and 
Bethany, and the hill-sides of Bethlehem are 
to-day a living vision of luminous and beauti- 
ful reality. A few Sundays ago it was my lot 
in the order of morning service to read the 
Second Lesson for the day, with its history of 
St. Peter's vision at Joppa, and of his visit 
to Cornelius the centurion at Caesarea, and, 
as I did so, the whole coast of the Mediter- 
ranean, with, I had almost said, every step of 
the way between the modern Jaffa and the 
still visible ruins of Caesarea, lived in my 
mind's eye, with all its surrounding scenery, 
precisely as it must needs, in that unchanging 
land, have been present to the eye of the 
Apostle himself; and I found myself almost 
wishing for a moment that I might pause and 
make it live, if only in some imperfect meas- 
ure, before the eyes of the listening congrega- 
tion. 

And this, in one word, is the supreme ad- 



252 VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 

vantage of travel in the Holy Land. It makes 
the Bible another book. Its geography be- 
comes, so to speak, disentangled and distinct. 
Its scenery is an enduring memory, and a per- 
petual and most helpful commentary. One 
reads, " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills 
from whence cometh my help," and at once 
there rise before his sight those mountain fast- 
nesses whose winding pathways the traveller 
of to-day so often threads, and safe amid 
which God so often hid the fugitive David. 
To say that such impressions can be derived 
from books, from the descriptions of others, 
or from pictures of whatsoever sort, is to say 
what all our experience is perpetually dis- 
proving. 

And this, as it seems to me, is the answer 
to the question with which I began. It is 
worth while to visit the Holy Land, simply be- 
cause in no other way can one derive impres- 
sions so vivid, so enduring, and so enduringly 
helpful. It is- worth, to any clergyman, all it 
costs him, and far more, to see Palestine, even 
in the most hurried and imperfect way. And 
it need not cost him so very much, either in 
time or money. Three months and $500 are 
enough to cover one's outlay of both kinds 
from the time he leaves his door in our own 



VISITS TO THE HOLY LAND. 253 

land until he returns to it. And by making 
those months September, October, and 
November, one could be at his post before 
Christmas, and have six weeks of the very 
best weather, viz., one in September for 
northern Syria, all of October, and one week 
in November, for the country further south. 
This would allow three weeks for the journey 
from New York to Beyrout (it can be done in 
eighteeen days), and three weeks to return 
via Alexandria in Egypt. I mention these 
details because they answer questions which 
are so often asked of those who have visited 
the East, and because they may help others 
to accomplish a journey which can never 
cease to have supreme attractions to every stu- 
dent of the Bible, as, indeed, to Christians of 
every name and land. The Holy Land is 
the enduring interpreter of the Word of God, 
and of the dealings of His Providence with a 
people whose changing and eventful fortunes 
have had an almost incalculable influence 
upon human history. As such, it will abun- 
dantly reward every endeavor to traverse its 
varied area, and to become familiar with its 
most suggestive characteristics. 

THE END. 



APPENDIX. 



Literal translation of the Jewish lamenta- 
tions at the place of wailing at Jerusalem. 

i. 

On account of these things, and on account of 
those, do I constantly weep. 

My eyes, my eyes do flow with water. 

Even for the destruction of our holy house, which 
was trampled upon and trodden down. 

I will ever mourn year by year. 

A holy lamentation on account of the holy things, 
and on account of the sanctuary. 

A voice of woe is heard at hoary Ramah. 

A voice of wail from sainted Zion's hill. 

A midnight's voice of woe is heard at hoary Ramah. 

2. 

I think of the days when I was a Princess. 
In the hand of Jehovah a diadem of glory. 
And now I am black. 
I am sunk in the pit of the deepest clay. 
On account of this 

A voice of woe is heard, etc. 



APPENDIX. 255 

3. 
The only beloved spouse have I then been. 
And the glory of the Highest was I named. 
And now I am descended to the lowest degrada- 
tion. 

And my beloved and my friend went up on high. 
A voice of woe, etc. 

4. 

Together my beloved virgins and friends 

Weep with me for my many woes. 

No one enlarges my tent and strengthens my 
stakes. 

For my Beloved departed from me, and I went 
into captivity. 

A voice of woe, etc. 

5. 
From my high place have I been cast down as an 
old hag. 

He sent fire in my bones ; oh, it prevailed, 

And I went into captivity a lone widow. 

Judah was driven into captivity in perfect misery. 

A voice of woe, etc. 

6. 

The bride of the Lord was I in the midst of the 
temple. 

His cloud was daily seen upon His dwelling on 
Mount Zion. 



25 6 APPENDIX. 

And now I am cast away like a poor intruder. 
My enemy took my ornaments, and I am in mis- 
erable poverty. 

A voice of woe, etc. 

7. 
My priests and my elders my enemies slaughtered. 
Oh, they are the seed of the friend of God, holding 
fast His covenant. 

My precious children and my virgins. 
They were driven in captivity. 

A voice of woe, etc. 

8. 

Behold in all these misfortunes none seeks my 
peace. 

The desolation is complete, and to the nations I 
lift up my head for sympathy. 

But my enemies mock me, dare not call Him my 
husband. 

Woe is me, for I fell before merciless children. 

A voice of woe, etc. 

9- 

Father of mercies, we pray Thee, return to Zion. 

May we see with our eyes the rebuilding of the 
Temple. 

And may this house be exalted. 

And then may Thy redeemed ones list their joy- 
ful praises, 

And the voice of thanksgiving. 



APPENDIX. 257 

Literal translation of another elegy. Each 
distich begins with a Hebrew letter in alpha- 
betical order. It consists of twelve verses. 
The first verse is repeated after each verse : 



Wail, O Zion, with thy cities, 
Like as a woman in great anguish, 
And like a virgin girded with sackcloth 
For the husband of her youth. 



On account of the city which is forsaken, 
By reason of the transgression of thy people, 
And on account of the blasphemer's intrusion 
Within thy beauteous sanctuary. 

3. 

On account of the exile of God's ministers, 
Who melodiously chanted the songs of thy praise ; 
And on account of their blood which was spilt, 
Like the water of thy rivers. 



On account of the joyous dances 

Which are now silent in thy cities, 

And on account of the Assembly Palace which has 

been destroyed, 
And the abolition of thy Sanhedrim, 



2,58 APPENDIX. 

5. 

On account of thy continual sacrifices 

And the redemption of the first-born, 

And on account of the profanation of the vessels of 

the temple 
And the altar of incense. 



On account of the royal scions, 

The sons of David, thy nobles, 

And on account of their beauty, which became dark 

Since the removal of thy diadem. 

7. 
On account of the glory which has departed 
At the time of the destruction of thy palaces, 
And on account of the oppression of the oppressor, 
Who made thy girdles sackcloth. 

8. 

On account of the wounds and multitude of bruises 
With which her Nazarites were smitten, 
And on account of the dashing against the stones 
Of thy infants and thy young men. 

9- 

On account of the joy amongst thy enemies 
Who mock at thy calamity, 

And on account of the affliction of the noble sons, 
Thy princes, thy chaste ones. 



APPENDIX. 259 



On account of the transgression which perverted 
The appointed pathway of thy footsteps, 
And on account of the hosts of thy congregations, 
The sunburnt ones, and dark ones. 



On account of the voices of thy abusers 
At the time when thy carcasses were multiplied, 
And on account of thy raging cursers, 
Within the tabernacle of thy court. 

12. 

On account of thy name, which has been profaned, 
In the mouth of thy upstart oppressors, 
And on account of their loud solicitude, 
Hearken and listen to her words, 

Wail, O Zion. 



These lamentations are finished by several 
prayers for the speedy coming of the Messiah. 
The following is the concluding verse : 

In mercy, Lord, Thy people's prayer attend ; 
Grant the desire of mourning Israel. 
O shield of Abraham, our Redeemer send, 
And call His glorious name Emmanuel. 



